Growing Green for Christmas

Hola! Where does time go and why do I always feel behind on blogging? Really? Tell me how November felt like a total of 2 seconds long and now we're decorating for Christmas already.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving vacay in Mexico with Tyler's family, but like all time these days, it went by too quickly. We had gorgeously warm weather and plenty of fun kayaking, soaking up the sun, and just hanging out with family. It was nice to be by a BEACH again... Oy, sometimes we get a little homesick for our Hawaiian beaches.

And speaking of warm weather... (bad segue, I know)... What is up with the weather we are having?

This weekend we spent  most of our time and energy putting up our Christmas decorations... in t-shirts. People were walking around in shorts! It's December 3 and it is dark outside and I have the doors open enjoying the not-so-cool-but-warmish night breezes.

Something feels a little off. This is not Hawaii. This is the Midwest and it should be cold.

We are growing green this Christmas. No plastic trees for us! No cut trees either.

I've always liked fresh trees for Christmas, but the thought of the mass tree murder  that happens around the season is a little sad (I know they plant 3 trees for every one they cut, but I think there's a little bit of Lorax inside of me). So this year we've followed a tradition of Tyler's family and we've welcomed a living, growing tree into our home. Its roots are lovingly packaged in burlap and it's nestled into a wash bin (double lined with painter's tarp). We had to bring out our Hulk muscles in order to get it into place because it feels like it weighs 3 tons, but eventually we got it situated to start the decorating!

It's still a work in progress. Though we've been together over 4 years now this is only our second Christmas we've spent under the same roof. We haven't had time to build up a large ornament collection. Each year Tyler's mom has given us a few special ornaments she's collected from different locations and we have one that we bought in Hawaii last year.  So we've been adding to our collection by making our own, and popcorn garland too! A labor of love that will probably last the whole season.

{ Remembering Christmases past - with an address on the other side }

We picked out our tree at Daniken Tree Farm, which was a little bit of a drive but totally worth it for the size of tree we got. The biggest ones we could find at stores like Home Depot or Lowes were about 2 feet tall. And even Eckert's trees only stood about 4 feet tall. The one we picked is a white pine grown right here in Illinois.

After the holidays we will be planting our tree so we can watch it grow for many years to come.

Planting this tree doesn't mean we'll have a cold winter next year with lots of snow, but we like helping our environment in whatever ways we can, even if it's just one tree. It's still one PRETTY tree, you guys! ...and think of the forest we'll have planted when we're old and grey!

 

I think I'm going to go hug my tree now.

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