Be Excellent To Each Other

We were inbetween trees this year, so bought one of these.

http://www.crowders.co.uk/buy/christmas ... s-snowtime

The minute I paid for it I thought "maybe not"

When I removed it from the box, 4 raw bolts fell out, so its supposed to be used outside!

Its not really the same as a tree, fake or real and I may yet have to buy one as my wife is pissed off, even though she was there when I bought this and was ok with it!

Our living room, Christmas tree and for Perkies, a close up of George our guard giraffe who is also in the festive spirit. We also have a new giraffe you should be able to see. His name is Barney because he is made out of recycled beer cans and so when Jen got him as a birthday present from her mum, I drunkenly proclaimed that he was a party giraffe and so was the Barney to George's Ted.

This is the extent of the decorations in our house. Having an exam on 19th December meant I didn't have chance to put then up before then and we've barely been home since. Oops.

Yay! An gy-raiife! When I first read the description I was expecting him to be actually sculpted from a big stack of empty cans of Tennents. The pair of legs sticking into the first picture just make it look even cosier.



Pfft. What's your belmtastic husband been doing?

Where the heck are the trees for the last two years?

Anyway, can somebody share with me the secret of taking a decent picture of a Christmas tree? I can never get the light balance right. It's in front of the world's biggest window: do I take the picture at night or in the day? With the room lights on or off, with tree lit? I don't have the sparkly white tree now, so need to take a picture of a green one.

I think I have managed it. I mean, not a great shot, but hopefully one that is not just a blur.

huzzah tree!!!!!



Obligatory decoration for Christmas Puddin':


My Christmas Puddin':


All my universe is taken up with happy

Wth? WHERE ARE YOUR TREE PICS?

You had a tree before December. I very nearly deleted the entire forum.

Well obviously the civilised response is: "It's only the 1st of December".

Smashing photo of the Puddin

Russell is not usually allowed to put the tree up until December 1st, but we had guests this past weekend, so we needed the space in the Nursery to move out the kingsize bed thing, which meant we had to put the presents and tree up to make room in there.

Thank you Morte! It turns out babies dressed as little Christmas puddings are a new level of cute!

aww completely adorable puddin mimi!


but, no christmas before sinterklaas!

Very sensible, those Dutch

But doesn't he arrive from Spain (with his in no way racist helpers) towards the end of November?

Yes, and polite for the most part. However, a friend bumped into a couple of the Utd strikers 10 years back. He said Solskaer was great but the Dutch man was Ruud.

Just ten years back? How long have you had that joke in reserve for, Mali?

In a valiant display of procrastination (not pro-craster-nation, that's something else entirely), I've found myself looking through all your pictures of christmas trees from 3-4 years ago. Christ, camera phones were shit back then.

I still have the same phone, cheeky!

I think Christmas trees are tricky subjects to take pictures of.

I was told we are not having a real tree this year as MrsA is going to her parents a week before me. I might buy one anyway so Shitpants can pull it over. It'll keep her out of the coal for a while, at least.

What ever happened to Decca?

She met us.

And (allegedly) stole the pool balls.

Indeed, he currently roams the land until his fiesta on dec 5th and THEN we get our Christmas miracle where we wake up on dec 6th and all the shops have magically transformed into a Christmas wonderland.

GENIUS

So do your shops not stock Christmassy type things until December 5th? See, I wouldn't mind that, if (say) stores here did not have their Christmas ranges until December 1st, but it would make things really difficult for us as we usually have all our Christmas shopping done by early-mid November. Because of the nature of the workplace that Russell and I are in (head office of a large chain of retail outlets) our holidays are sanctioned around Christmas time, so nobody can take days off in December, so we'd be scuppered.

We'd still have the internet to shop by, I guess, but then we'd not see the wintery wonderland shops

Or, the weekend

Say what? Have I failed to remember a story?

Wait! There were children involved! At the cottage!

I didn't even think it was worth mentioning that only the most brutally stupid or foolhardy and brave of people brave shops on a weekend in December, and I am not one of those.

Not only that, but you've failed to remember it after you asked about Decca the last time.

I don't think I'll bother with a tree this year - I'm not going to be at my place over Xmas anyway.

In January I pro-actively decided that this year we would want a real Christmas tree, so binned our fake one. It wasn't great, but serviceable for another 2/3 years if need be.

Last week, Oncologist told us we're not allowed a real Christmas tree.

Have just bought new £100 Christmas tree that probably isn't as good as the one I chucked.

Fucksticks.

Indeed I have, as a quick search has confirmed.

Get one of those pop-out pre-decorated ones. They're ace.

That sounds really fucking lazy.

SOLD

The little spirally ones? Yeah, they are ace and don't take up much room

Oh, that's a big shame. If you haven't put up your new tree, Tesco have a really nice and full 7-8ft tree for £60.

Why would he want two?

He could take the not so good £100 one back home.

To the shop.

Back home to the shop. Where it lives.

She's opened her presents already?!

Most garden centers have completely decked the halls in Christmas stuff for at least November (probably a couple of weeks before). This is mostly because there is hardly any decoration to be sold for Sinterklaas and they apparently need several months to sell all their Christmas crocodile baubles (yes I bought one).

Present wise, people need to shop for Sinterklaas and / or Christmas gifts and so there are sales and extended openings and special offers etc around anyway.

Fire bad, tree pretty.

Tree drunk.

I've always wanted a real tree one year but with 2 kids pulling off baubles, 4 cats climbing the branches and now a house rabbit who'll probably eat the bottom half, I can't help but think it's going to be a few years before I get to see out my wish.

Tree sober again.

4 CATS? 3 is bad enough!

Of all the things in that sentence, the cats are the least of my worries

We're still finding occasional pine needles from last year's real tree, so we might go back to fake for this year.

This is tree 1 of 2 in our house. Its a small live tree, which I hope to keep alive in a pot for years to come.

Its upstairs and is for our son (2.5 now) he loves it and helped me decorate, the help did include tipping my box of fixings (for the lights I put around the landing) on the floor but it was a great afternoon

He loves Owls so I managed to find one to go on the top.