My friend Summer has taught me how to truly get excited for Christmas, how to plan fun things to look forward to, and how to dive into the preparation of getting ready for the biggest celebrated event of the year for us Americans. Having been raised Amish, we never celebrated with trees, decorations, and parties like I'm able to do now.
Last Saturday, we planned for Summer to come to our house. From there, I'd take her to my friend's tree farm called Sycamore Hollow, named after the huge tree pictured above. Sycamore Hollow grows all Frasier fir trees.
Before we set out on our merry adventure...
my Mom, who lives next door, made us a delicious feast fit for a king. Smoked turkey, her famous dressing (stuffing), corn, and gravy.
It was such a treat!
I couldn't wait to show Summer this quaint country place I was taking her where we could cut our own trees.
Yes! Even Syd got to take home a tree for her room. It probably helped that this tree farm was at her friend's house, plus Summer swaying me --the Mom--that every little girl needs a tree in their room.
Syd spent a lot of time laying on her bed and enjoying her beautiful tree. She wants to move it into her sister's room when she comes home for a visit soon.
One thing I learned is that the longer you look, the more confusing it gets to pick out the perfect tree. So, take Summer's advice on picking your tree out within the first five minutes of the hunt.
She had hers picked out first and instantly decided to love it!
This tree farm is truly a place that takes you back in time, like I imagine it used to be with not a lot of people around, and, instead, you're surrounded by...
...horses, cats, dogs, and even a huge white goat.
After loading up our pine-scented trees, we headed back to my house to...
...wrestle my perfect tree through the front door and up the steps. Not to mention take all the things that were in the way with us, only to discover the pine needle trail we left behind.
OH MY! All at once my perfect tree was now this huge monster in the room, stabbing at the ceiling.
But Summer didn't hesitate to clip the top, off, declaring, "There that's so much better!"
I still wasn't feeling it, so I decided to clip some of the long branches off the bottom. Well, now I created a problem because it looked like my not-so-perfect tree was standing on it's tippy toes.
When Allen returned from hunting, he gallantly came to the rescue. We unscrewed the ugly duckling out of the water-filled stand and dragged it to the back porch where he chainsawed it to the right height.
His reward was a steak after running to the dollar store for more lights.
Another fun thing we did was gather fresh pines, holly and cedar at my Dad's house.
Love how the cedar looks on top of this old ladder. I'll be adding the battery-powered lights later tonight.
Later in evening, I called my friend to see if she still loves her tree and to see how many lights she uses. She said 100 lights per foot in height. She also told me she starts at the bottom and moves upward, wrapping every branch out then back to center. That's another lesson the English chick is teaching this Amish girl.;)
In this picture, her tree is still not decorated but is just strung with lights. She's making me wait until her Christmas party to see it.
So I got 700 lights wrapped with patience and still didn't have enough, so today, we stopped to pick up 300 more.
When the day was complete, I felt even more blessed when my Mother sent over a warm pumpkin pie.
Plus, I had magical moments spent with a friend and family. God blessed us with a white-out snow storm at just the right moment. Last night, I didn't feel like I had the perfect tree, but I definitely had the perfect day.
Tonight, we finished our tree and we now LOVE it. It was worth every bit of the cutting and patience.
I hope your Christmas season will be magical, even if its just the anticipation of it.
I'll share a blog later about all the trimmings and glitter I've been playing with.
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