The Leaning Tower of Martin

As new homeowners right before Christmas, naturally the first priority once we got the house was to discuss seasonal decor. One of us had visions of twinkling lights, gorgeous wreaths and perfectly hung stockings dancing in their head while one of us had visions of burnt out bulbs, broken ornaments and entirely too many trips to Target dancing in their head.  As a means of compromise, Ryan suggested that decorating a tree would be a good start for our first year.  We don't have couches, beds or furniture in the house yet mind you so perhaps the life-sized replica of Santa and Rudolph I envisioned on our lawn might have been a little excessive. 

My parents generously donated an old artificial tree to our cause. I willingly donated the better half of a Sunday afternoon to making the most of the Trim the Tree sale at C&B and it was game on.  Ryan and I's time is in short supply these days between my being in quarter at work, exciting holiday festivities and wedding related events for our dear friends, so we decided that in order to get the tree up we'd have to go out to Katy after work this past Thursday (December 9th). 

After a pit stop at storage and a pit stop at Sonic (our first meal together in our new home- we are nothing if not classy) we arrived at the house optimistic and full of cheer.  Then we encountered problem #1:  we can not figure out how to turn on the heat in our house.  Not to be dissuaded from the task at hand, we overlooked problem #1. 

We brought the tree in and started to put it together.  There are 3 pieces- can't be that hard, right?  Wrong.  This brings us to problem #2.  The top level of the tree has a tapered bottom that should lock securely into a square shaped peg within the tube on the top part of the second level.  Well, somewhere along the way that square shaped peg fell way too far down that tube.  So the "locking securely" thing didn't really pan out.

Leaning like a cholo.

Once again, I was determined to persevere.  I decided we would ignore problem #2 and just try to plug the tree in.  Then we could decorate the tree and mess with the top over the weekend when Ryan moves his stuff in.  We went to plug the tree in and learned that the cord is VERY SHORT.  As in... so short that we moved the tree as close as we could to the wall which garnered smooshed branches and me having a new appreciation for the term between a wire branch rock and a hard place.  We could not get the plug close enough to the wall to get that bad boy in.  Problem #3, my friends.  Recognizing I was near tears (about 45% from laughter and 55% from tragedy and a wire to the cheek), Ryan volunteered to run to Walmart to get an extension cord.  It's approximately 10:00 at this time.

He triumphantly returned with the extension cord.  It was more or less like the battle scene in Braveheart.  So we plug the tree in and are greeted with- a spotty (at best) showing of lights.  Some portions are out, some portions are not.  At this point problem #4 is just funny.  We decided to ignore it, put the ornaments on the tree and call it a night as soon as possible.  Clearly enough damage had been done.

Ryan sat down on the ground and mostly just watched with interimittent laughter as I put our newly purchased ornaments on the tree.  Behold:

I like bling.

This was the first time he had seen them and he had some thoughts on some of my choices.  I, for instance, was very excited about some clip on birds from West Elm.  After about 50 rounds of Ryan singing "Tweedily diddly deet, tweedily diddly deet, Rocking Robbin"- I am less enthused.

I also purchased some silver ornament frames which obviously come with stock pictures.  As I mentioned above, I have not had much time these days.  Therefore, I have not replaced the stock photos with those near and dear to us as I would have liked to.  Ryan found this hilarious and has taken to making up names and stories for the stock photographs.  For instance, meet our new dog Scruffy:

Scruffy looks kind of old.

Finally, after the last ornament was hung Ryan serenaded me with a self- composed version of O'Christmas Tree which was mainly a lot of verses about things that are crooked, birds and our new dog.  Okay, so our first tree was not at all the Martha Stewart-worthy production that I envisioned, but it definitely achieved the goal- which was for it to be a memory.  Here's to next year being a greater success (or at the very least less crooked)...

Me & the tree playing some "I'm a little teapot."

Ryan looooooves Christmas trees.

Even from outside it's pretty evident that something is not right here.