Christmas Tree Cutting

 

And just like that, we move from Thanksgiving into Christmas!  Full speed ahead.  If I'm honest, we actually decorated a good bit of the house a few days before Thanksgiving.  Abby wasn't feeling well the Monday before the holiday so she stayed home.  To keep her busy while I jumped from call to call, I unpacked all of the inside decor and set Abby free.  She decorated the entire inside.  She picked out the mantel, set up the garland, decorated the steps down to the basement and put all the decorations in both her room and Hazel's.  It's really nice to have someone do all that for you!  And...it's also cool to see how someone else reuses the stuff you've been setting up for years.  She set some things up differently, and it looks great!

Tree cutting this year was a little big of a shenanigans!  After quite a few years of cutting at Williams Tree Farm, we decided we'd try a farm we'd ditched long ago, Oneys in Woodstock.  We thought we'd give it another go, to see if they'd gotten better trees after a few years of doing something else.  Turns out, after walking the fields for over an hour, we found out the farm was for sale.  My guess is that they've not been putting 100% into the farm for a few years now and you could totally tell!  Bummer, for sure.

We cut bait, packed up in the cars, drove about an hour up to Williams and honestly, it was the perfect choice.  We pulled up and got right to work.  Erin really wanted to watch the Michigan game and the extra time tromping around at Oney's set up behind.  We tried out a second whole field we'd never been to at Williams this year and I am certain we'll be back.  We jumped onto the big tractor trailer and were quickly out in the field surrounded by tons of great trees. 

We all found the perfect trees for our houses.  Abby picked ours out this year and she did great.  It might be one of my favorite trees.  It's a good size, full enough and doesn't have a lot of weird spots!  Decorated, it looks amazing. 

I've got a baby quilt for Liz and Bobby currently in the works, but as soon as that is finished and off to the quilter, I'm heading into making a homemade tree skirt.  It won't be ready to use this year but after nearly a year and a half of searching for just the right fabric, I've finally got it all pulled together and I'm excited to dive into that project.  The pattern uses dresdens (which involve curved piecing) and I've never tried them.  I'm a little nervous, but that's how you learn something new!

And, my Christmas sign!  Isn't it great?  Erin always does such a nice job with these signs for us.  She changes them 4 or more times per year and they always turn out great.  I'm so lucky to be able to just order these up and within a few hours I've got something beautiful to display in the house.  I love this year's sign!