The Tale of 3 Trees

While Len and I were growing up our families always had real Christmas trees each year, so for the first 5 years of our marriage so did we. Flashback to 2002, when we first moved to Ottawa we learned 2 things- 1: We were not allowed to have real trees in our apartment building (fire code, shmire shmode), so we bought the least expensive fake tree we could find. 2: We learned a lot of our friends in Ottawa put up 2 Christmas trees each year, 1 for all of the "pretty" ornaments and 1 for all of the "kid" ornaments, so I made a mental note to do that at a later date.

Each year we buy a new Hallmark ornament to represent that year. This year we chose "Kissmas Cottage" representing that we are homeowners. I know we technically moved into our home in 2009, but last year we had Teague's "Baby's 1st Christmas" ornament and this year we have truly turned our house into our home.


So here is our 1st family tree in our living room trimmed in red and all of our Hallmark ornaments with a star on top.

While we were in Taiwan we upgraded our little Charlie Brown tree for a fuller version, but we kept our original tree for that mental note that was tucked away for a "kid" tree in the future. Last year after moving back to Ottawa, we finally put up both trees, 1 with the "pretty" ornaments upstairs, and 1 with the "kid" ornaments in the basement. It was a little skimpy on the decor, so I picked up a few snowflake and icicle ornaments to fill it out.

This year I thought of ditching the kid ornaments (Does that make me a bad mom? I still kept them though!) and using more snow and ice elements. I was inspired by Debbie Travis' "Winter Forest" ornaments at Canadian Tire, but...

...our 2nd parent tree in our master bedroom is done all in white with ornaments only from Dollarama(!) with a snowflake on top.

I love shopping during the after Christmas sales, and last year I found a 6.5 foot Christmas tree for only $13, so of course I had to add it to our collection. I was inspired by Michael's "Jingle & Jolly" theme and I used coupons to buy some ornaments and then I made a ton more for...

...our 3rd kid tree in the basement in all the candy colors (cherry popsicle, orange sorbet, lemon drop, sour apple, winter mint, blueberry slush, sugar plum, and cotton candy) with a few fancy Michael's ornaments complete with a cherry on top.

*If we ever have space to set up the 3 trees together, I'd like to do one in ruby, another in emerald, and the last in sapphire with gold crowns atop each. They would represent the 3 Magi and I would put a manger filled with hay at the center with a pretty calligraphic sign that says, "Wise Men Still Seek Him."

*Now our kids think Santa is going to leave gifts under all 3 trees, sorry kids he's too busy to run up and down all of our stairs. The fireplace is on the main floor so that is the only tree he will visit!