15 days til.....................

The days are flying by and this is my 7th Countdown to Christmas post. Today I would like to share our Christmas tree traditions. Since I was a little girl we have always had a real tree at home. When my Hb and I married even for our 1st Christmas we had a real tree in our little flat which almost filled our tiny front room, but it was so important to us to have one!
Last  weekend was the traditional weekend that we buy our Christmas tree, usually the 1st Saturday in December. We have a local nursery which always sells top quality trees and ours lasts perfectly right until its taking down on 12th night. This was our tree in 2007......

My Hb and I took a trip up to the nursery and it was delivered on Monday.  Usually we have 2 trees, one in the dining room and a "chocolate" tree in the hall. However this year we are still decorating the dining room and our bookcase is in the hall where that tree would normally stand. So this year we have just bought the one for the dining room. We will hang our chocs from the stairs banisters instead I think where we have our Christmas cards displayed.

We always chose a Nordmann Fir for the tree in the dining room as its leaf retention is fantastic. We first bought this variety in the early 1980s before it really caught on in the UK. Everyone traditionally bought the Norway spruce and indeed as a little girl this is the tree we always had and by the new year it was usually quite bald! Our chocolate tree is often a rooted spruce.

This year all the trees up at the nursery were nestled among the snow!

We tend to buy a 7 feet tall tree as that fits our room perfectly. The lads in the nursery are always so helpful and get as many trees out of their sacking as you want to look at. We chose a lovely bushy one with plenty of room to hang all my ornaments on.

We also decided to go into the Garden Centre as rumour had it that there were some real live reindeer visiting...we were not disappointed and found these sweet creatures...

One little girl standing next to us ask her Daddy which one was Rudolph....

I think this must have been him as he stood up to say hello. Their antlers are fascinating, they look so furry.













After admiring the reindeer I decided I would like to buy a small poinsettia for the house. Unlike one of my blogging friends Vivienne I am not usually one for houseplants, unless they survive on neglect, but I do like to have a Christmas plant in the house.

There were lots of unusual colours

But I decided I would like the traditional red colour.








 
 
So we completed our purchases and headed back to the warm. Usually we would be decorating our tree on the Sunday but as it could not be delivered until Monday it will have to wait until tomorrow. I can't wait to get the ornaments out of their boxes from the loft and will be back with another post very soon to share them with you. Some of my ornaments were owned by my grandfather and go back to the 1930/40s. I also still have the very first ornament my Hb and I bought for our 1st tree back in 1981! I hope you are all thinking about decorating your tree soon.....
 
Finally today I wanted to share with you this most romantic Christmas poem, it appears in my Christmas compendium book and I love to read it at this time of year.....enjoy....

♥ Mistletoe ♥

Sitting under the mistletoe
(Pale green fairy mistletoe)
One last candle burning low,
All the sleepy dancers gone,
Just one candle burning on,
Shadows lurking everywhere:
Some one came, and kissed me there.


Tired I was; my head would go
Nodding under the mistletoe
(Pale green, fairy mistletoe)
No footsteps came, no voice, but only,
Just as I sat there, sleepy, lonely,
Stooped in the still and shadowy air
Lips unseen - and kissed me there.

Walter De La Mare, 1873-1956

Bye for now,
 
Jane x

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(I am adding an edit here on Saturday afternoon as I have just heard the most wonderful news that dear Tom proposed to our darling daughter whilst at the summit of Kinder Scout in the Peak District today....I dedicate the above poem to them and send them SO much love and congratulations. What a wonderful Christmas present this is for us all xx)

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