^^That’s the first successful emoji I’ve been able to place on the post I wanted it on. Very weird.
We have a Hallmark ornament, Pickles the Elf. He’s a cute little guy. I hide it in the tree and my youngest finds it.
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we get our tree from a little ma/pa rural farm about 20 minutes away; they sold out this year (125 trees) in 5 days. booming business during covid. Fun part was: saw their grandkid sporting a really noticeable mullet. Made me smile!
decorated with white lights, gold flowers and sprays and ribbon this year. I’m just almost too sad to get out the family ornaments that no one will see.
I wish I had known about the pickle when my kids were young—fun tradition! The Elf on the Shelf, on the other hand, is too much work. I’m also glad it wasn’t a thing when my kids were young because I wouldn’t have gotten one either. I feel bad for friends with young kids who don’t want an elf but their kids receives one as a gift (usually from the grandparents).
@bgbg4us I understand how you feel. I feel a tinge of sadness too knowing we won’t be celebrating in person with anyone outside of our covid bubble.
I feel the same way about Elf on the Shelf!
My co worker’s kid has one, it was a gift from a relative. but she doesn’t do anything elaborate, just moves the Elf around. She says that as a working mom, having to remember to move the darn Elf is hard enough, there is no way she’d be able to find the time to do something more elaborate with the elf. I’ve seen pictures online of moms who go all out with the elf…I wonder if they’re stay at home moms?
The pickle does sound fun though!
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I was a SAHM, and I would not have bothered to do the elf thing!!
Yeah when I was a SAHM after D was born I wouldn’t have done it either…
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Same here! My kids hated clowns, Disney Characters, etc. (they still do). The elf would have freaked them out.
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It’s mostly my friends who stay at home who are expending the most energy with the elf, moving it, staging it like it’s been baking cookies all night (think flour all over the kitchen and freshly baked cookies), and buying little presents to their kids “from” the elf. Seems exhausting!
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Yeah that seems so exhausting! And do kids really need that much?
To be honest, most SAHMs I know wouldn’t do the Elf on the Shelf either…for a lot of people its not their thing.
One thing I always thought would be fun, would be those Polar Express trains. I wanted to do that when my kids were little, but there wasn’t one near us and they’re so expensive and were on a budget when the kids were little. Oh well, we did other fun stuff.
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Not at all. I stayed home with my kids when they were young and it was all about managing expectations. 
Those Polar Express trains do look fun and there is one near us, but my kids thought the movie was scary. As teens, it’s become their Christmas Eve tradition to watch it. Go figure!
Decision has been made. No real tree this year. My beautiful fake tree will get set up tomorrow. We are only decorating in the family room and setting the dining room table.
Usually our real tree has our family ornaments and my beautiful fake tree has ornaments that were given to me over 40 years by students and coworkers when I taught. This year, our family ornaments will go on the fake tree. I’ll miss my special memory tree, but if we are having only one, the family ornaments need to be on it.
No one is going to be here at Christmas…so it’s just decorating for DH and me. DD might be getting the first vaccine shot this week. So she is a maybe…but not a likely.
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Be good to yourself! Go out and buy a new Christmas decoration! Treat yourself! Cut out the “have to’s” and focus on the “want to’s!”. Wrap a bottle of special wine for under the tree! You still need to make Christmas special even if you are the only one present.
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We always get a fresh/live tree, but since we keep it up until Epiphany, we usually wait until the second weekend in December so it’s not half dead by January 6th. However, since we are spending so much time at home this year, I decided to get it a little earlier to have something pretty to look at. I convinced my husband to go with me last Friday, because it was supposed to rain on Saturday. Well, thank goodness we did! The place we went just had fresh trees delivered the day before so we had a great selection. It did not end up raining the next day, and by Sunday, my social media was blowing up from people desperately looking for a place that still had trees taller than 3 feet.
Then yesterday, I noticed while out running errands that many of the places nearby had NO trees at all. The one closest to my house where we often go (didn’t go there this year) always has trees all the way up until Christmas. When I drove by this morning, they had three rinky dink trees. Unheard of to see them out of trees this early. Even last year (or maybe it was the year before) when there were rumors of a weather-related tree shortage, there were still plenty of trees around close to Christmas. I again saw numerous posts today on social media asking who still has trees.
The funny thing is that I know many people, including my parents, who opted not to get a tree this year since they would not be entertaining and not having family over. Even my sister, who always gets a live tree, decided to get an artificial tree this year for the first time. My local friends all still have kids living at home and always put up a tree, so it’s not like something changed this year for my local friends.
Is anyone else seeing this happen where they live? I told dh I was so thankful we did not wait this year to get one like we normally do. And ironically, I think the tree we got this year is the best tree (shape/size) we have ever had and it’s the one year no one else besides our family will see it!
Yes…tree farms have already closed here. Many places that sell trees are out of them already. I think the difference is that more folks bought their trees earlier…closer to Thanksgiving weekend than Christmas.
If we had wanted a real tree, we would have gone shopping for it next weekend…the week before Christmas. My guess…none would have been left.
Honestly, my fake tree is lovely and will be fine this year.
We are looking at all the time we are saving not putting up as many decorations as usual. It will be just festive enough for us. And as I have said…our Christmas table will be all set with holiday linens, the Lenox Christmas dishes, silver, crystal, candles, a centerpiece of some kind. We also have everyday Christmas dishes I will be getting out tomorrow.
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We got our real tree earlier this week and decorated it today. My mother lived with my brother for years and they had all her ornaments in storage. They didn’t used them because they believe in super scrawny trees from their property. I got given all her ornaments and I dug out all the Japanese silk balls and put them on the tree. I love them and they are sort of in honor of my kid who is supposed to be deployed to Japan in the spring.
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Although H grew up with a real tree each year, I didn’t. After we were first married, we did have a real tree for the first year or two. Fake after that. A few years back (5 now?) we got a lovely much smaller artificial tree. Decorating is much easier, as there isn’t room for all of my ornaments, which are a mix of ornaments from my childhood, first this-or-that ornaments, ornaments my kids made when they were little, and some nice ornaments I bought just because. Looks like it will just be the two of us on Christmas.
Fresh trees are scarce in my area too! We also buy our tree a bit later for it to last through Epiphany. In an effort to avoid the crowd, we went this past Friday to the local tree farm where we always buy our tree. They only had two trees left in the type and size we usually get! In years past, there would have still been a great selection from which to choose.
What were prices running out of curiosity for live trees? I opted for artificial last year because the prices were sky high.
We had a live tree one year that the needles absolutely did not fall off. I’m not sure what it was sprayed with. It looked beautiful from Thanksgiving to mid January. We put it in the side yard figuring it would rot out at some point. NOPE! Those needles were still on and green as ever in August. I always wonder what the garbage men thought hauling a tree out in August…
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