Dressin up Hermes

It took us over a week but we finally got around to decorating Hermes. He leans, drops lots of needles, and barely holds onto ornaments, we like him. Roslyn enjoyed watching it all happen and tired to get her mouth on every ornament she could find.

For her first Christmas we really outdid ourselves. We wrapped her 1 gift in grocery store ads. She seemed pretty pleased. We got her the Dr. Seuss books selfishly because we like reading them. I as a new year's resolution want to be able to read Fox in Socks with no mistakes.

Gussying up Gloria

Decorating Gloria was much warmer than chopping her down. I love how the tall skinny tree looks in our apartment. She doesn't have many branches but we managed to fill her up pretty well. Joshua added lights to the banister and we had candles lit. We spend the afternoon making Christmas cookies and cups of tea. Our little apartment's coziness is at it's maximum now.

Getting Gloria

We took Walter out in Washington for the first time this past weekend. We've spent a lot of time giving him some love and then over Thanksgiving he was in the shop getting de-rusted and a bottom line of rhino paint. We were eager to get him out but the trip went a bit differently than it was going to go in our heads. He still badly needs new tires so all the forest roads we knew of to sleep on had too much snow for us to gamble him on. So at midnight we finally found a state park to plop him into. We turned on our twinkle lights and hung out for a bit but went to sleep pretty quickly after parking.

It was a pretty darn cold night. Sleeping was okay but in the morning we busted out the little propane heater Joshua had brought. We finally got a chance to make coffee and toast some bagels in our van. Watched a movie huddled under blankets. The morning was actually quite lovely.

The afternoon was back to a struggle of finding a road we could park Walter on where we could also legally cut down a tree. After quite the search and frustration we found one. The little road was lovely, and quiet. We picked out an almost 6' tall, our tallest ever, skinny little lady that we named Gloria. This year we thought ahead and brought a small saw. It is actually the saw I got for school to cut balsa wood, worked better than we thought. We had a lovely cheese and cracker lunch in Walter then headed home to warm up.

Wasn't the smooth relaxing outing either of us imagined but it was still nice to get outside and feel the cold air on our cheeks. Next up new tires for Walter!

Fancying up Frank

 

Frank is a little lopsided, only holds about 4 ornaments and we ran out of lights towards the top. Luckily we care about none of those things and have been very much enjoying his colorful company every evening. I finally finished reading the Harry Potter series to Joshua and we're on to another book. Joshua is super into this book so we've been making tea and reading almost every night to Frank's glow.

 

 

 

I made these little 3D animals for a kid's event we did with my office.

Also brought home a set for myself.

We're also particularly fond of this years Christmas card design :)

 

Frank the Fir

We are on letter "F" so this year our stubborn tiny tree is named Frank. I don't acutally know if he's a fir at all but there's also no one to contest me on it, so oh well.

Frank came to us from the side of a hill in the Umatilla National Forest in Oregon. We acquired a $5 pass to cut him down and then pulled of on a random National Forest road. We found a group of overcrowded trees and decided Frank was the one for us.

Sadly we had no saw. All we could find was a garden spade. Therefore we had to attempt to hack Frank down with a garden spade and then whittle away at the remaining strands with Josh's knife. It was windy, cold, and took quite a long time. Eventually we had success and tossed Frank in the back of Richard underneath the bikes to prolong the torture we put him through a bit longer.

Now he is happy and glowing and capable of holing about 6 ornaments on his little thin branches.

Enrobing Eugene

 

Eugene finally got some lights added. I am a scrooge about over Christmas decorating, but I love Christmas lights. We ran some up our banister that softly twinkle and the first thing I do when I get home at night is plug them in.

 

Our ornament collection is a bit overwhelming for little Eugene but how can you leave any out!

We drank old fashioneds and ate candy and added a little Christmas cheer to the Elrod apartment.

 

I love my custom painted Agatha ornament,

she's about to get a lot of use!

Bringing home Dagny

 

After our wintery hike we drove a few miles to cut down our Christmas tree. This tree farm had the most stunning backdrop! We got to cut down our tree with Mt Si right behind us as the sun was about to start its descent and it set some tree branches alight, the light dusting of snow on the ground really took the cake.

 

 

Our little tree came with a little controversy :) We asked if we were allowed to cut down trees that weren't tagged, the woman inside said yes so we cut down a cute little 5ish foot tree and went to pay. The dudes said you can't cut down trees less than 6 feet, we sheepishly smiled and pointed to the lady inside and totally got away with it! We promised to love it and care for it well.

We always name our tree and we're going in alphabetical order so this year we are at "D." Joshua FINALLY (3ish years later) finished the book Atlas Shrugged and one of the main characters names is Dagny so that's her name this year. It felt appropriate. She's was cut, thrown in the back of Richard, left in the bathtub for her snow to melt of and set up in her stand. Sadly busy busy work schedules haven't permitted us to decorate her classy branches yet, but we'll get to that this weekend!

You pay by the foot so we cut off half the trunk, obviously!