Oh Christmas Trees! Oh Christmas Trees!

First of all, I want to greet everyone who will get to read this post a Merry Merry Merry Christmas! I hope you are able to celebrate the season with less stress and more meaning.

We kicked off the holiday season on the weekend after my birthday when we put up our trees. Yes, with an S. We bought a tiny tree when we moved in back in 2010. In 2012, we bought a proper tree, a white one. I was in loved with it until in 2013, when we took it out of the box, we discovered an epidemic that has been affecting thousands of fake white trees. Parts of our tree turned yellow and dirty white. I was so disappointed that I lost the excitement of decorating for the holidays. There were other reasons of course, work for one, but I took the yellow tree as a sign to lie low on my Christmas decors.

This year, I promised myself that it will be different. As early as October, I have been turning down invitations to Christmas parties and get-togethers. We chose which ones we’d attend. I wanted to make sure that we don’t get caught up with the busy-ness. I want to savor little quiet moments. The feeling that everything is falling into place when I fold corners and sides while gift wrapping… The fuzzy feeling when I drink hot chocolate in our holiday oversized mug… The silliness when Aki closes his eyes and sings Star ng Pasko in his made-up no-sense lyrics…Watching the snowman in our failed DIY snowglobe float…Reading heartwarming notes on gift tags… Swing dancing with Franco in the tune of All I Want for Christmas. I am lucky to be married to a DI or dance instructor. Seriously, he can dance. He has the grace and timing that both Aki and I do not have. Haha. I’d love to post a password protected video here for posterity’s sake but the MB size is just too much for my free wordpress account.

Oh wait, back to our Christmas trees. Even though Christmas songs were playing loudly, the overall feeling on the night that we put up our trees was peace especially when the lights were turned on.

Aki is now big enough help. Gone are the days when all he wanted was to play with the baubles.

In fact, for his little tree which he decorates every year, he wanted a Pokemon theme. After watching a tutorial online, he asked me for styro balls and some paint. When I came home from work, he surprised me with the Pokeball ornament that he proudly made all by himself.

Aside from Pokeballs, his tree is adorned with Pokemon characters that he got from his exchange gift with Baby Jesus.

For the second tree, our theme is rustic. We bought a new tree to replace the yellowed one but on the night that we set-up our tree, Franco convinced me to keep the old one and just “make it work”. I liked the challenge. In the days to come, we went around the village and asked neighbors if we can have dried twigs.

Depending on the time of day, the tree looks gray, yellow or dirty white. With the brown twigs and gold Christmas balls, regardless of the color of the branches, old white tree looks festive.