Oh Christmas Tree!

Up here in the North we are surrounded by forests. A few years ago we started the tradition of hunting for our Christmas tree the weekend before Christmas. This tradition came after a lengthy conversation about the merits of a real Christmas tree versus a plastic Christmas tree. As a compromise we decided to cut down our tree from the wild.

Finding the "perfect" Christmas tree in the wild is very difficult. The trees never seem to have enough branches and don't stand quite straight.

Even if our Christmas tree looks like it was taken out of the Charlie Brown Christmas story, we've learned to love the quirkiness of it. In fact, this year Monkey declared our tree to be the "most beautiful tree ever". I guess there has to be something said about finding beauty in imperfection.

This year we have a few new additions to our Christmas tree. A little spider, which was a gift from a friend. In parts of Germany a spider is one of the first ornament for go on the tree. There is a beautiful children's book about this tradition called Cobweb Christmas: The Tradition of Tinsel.

There is also a new ornament that I won as a giveaway over at A Broken Fortress. It's a stamped metal snowman ornament from Stamped with Love.

The last addition is a knitted Christmas ball that Hubby picked from the piled that I knitted this past month.

Now that the Christmas tree is decorated we are all eagerly anticipating the celebration!