MERRY CHRISTMAS ..

..to all my blogger friends and those of you who faithfully read my blog.

HAVE A BLESSED, JOYOUS AND MEANINGFUL CHRISTMAS!


(Christmas tree from the lobby of La Fonda Hotel, Santa Fe)


(Homemade creche on Alameda St. in Santa Fe)


~

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Well, at least our tree is finally up.

Last year we had a whole lot of fun going into the Pecos Mountains to cut down out Christmas tree. This year for several reasons -- our late Nov.-early Dec. trip to Texas and because of lots of snow up in the mountains when we got back -- we had to change the game plan and buy a Christmas tree from a lot in Santa Fe.

We found a really nice noble fir, but the prices for cut Christmas trees has become very high. Next year we will be back up in the mountains picking out a $10 tree from the National Forest Service.

Last year's tree was ten feet tall, so this year's 7 footer looks a lot smaller in our living room with the high ceiling.

Anyway - our house is finally beginning to look Christmas-y and I still have some more decorations to get out today.

Saying goodbye to our Christmas tree

Some people don't get attached to their Christmas trees like we do. Christmas ends, and they can't wait to take their tree down - sometimes on Christmas night or the day after Christmas.

We love Christmas trees, and we traditionally wait till well into January to take ours down. This year was especially hard, because it was the interesting, less-than-perfect tree that we drove up into the mountains and tramped around in the snow to find and cut down ourselves. It was our first Christmas tree in New Mexico, and it was hard to undecorate it today, take it down and take it to the Community Center in Eldorado to add it to the pile of trees headed off soon to become mulch to nourish someone's garden.

O Christmas Tree

The tree is up and decorated and it doesn't look half bad. (Okay so it needed a little grafting and tweaking to make it presentable.)




I need to go read the instruction book and learn how to take pictures of lights in a dim room.

Christmas tree update

Okay, the tree is up in the living room. It fits in the space perfectly. At ten feet, it is just the right height for our high ceiling. BUT the picture does not really show up the huge gaping holes in the bottom section.

Some grafting is called for... developing story....stay tuned.

Our Christmas tree

For a $10.00 fee, you can buy a permit from the U.S. Forest Service to cut a Christmas tree in certain designated areas of the Santa Fe National Forest.

So...we decided that would be something different to do for our first Christmas here in Santa Fe.

We drove yesterday up into the mountains north of Pecos. This is an area of spectacular scenery and they have miles and miles of the forest land available for tree cutting.

Trouble is, finding a good tree is a challenge...we found it an almost impossible challenge. We must have looked around at hundreds of trees, tramping around in the snow (and some mud) to find something acceptable. We looked at blue spruce and Ponderosa pines. The trees were definitely not the perfectly shaped full trees that you find in town at the tree lots and stores.

So .. we realized that in order to cut a tree up in the mountains, we were going to have to settle for something other than our usual tree and get creative. In fact that was John's word when I tried to wimp out: "This tree will be a challenge and we will need to be creative."

So we found what we decided was the best of the bunch that we looked at, and we cut it down and brought it home. It's a blue spruce, and there were lots of really good branches at the bottom of the tree that John was able to cut off to use to make a wreath or two. In fact, the wreaths might be better looking than that tree will.

It was very cold up in the mountains - there are some places that little sun gets to, and quite a bit of snow still on the ground from the last snowfall a week ago. We brought lots of winter gear to put on to stay warm, but didn't need as much as we thought we would. And John remembered to bring a thermos of hot chocolate, which was a great idea when we got cold.

So...we now face the creative challenge -- how to make this scrawny tree look good!