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Our home is decorated for Christmas with the kids (28, 25 & 22) stockings on the mantle and the tree decorated with ornaments made by the kids or given as gifts over past 35 years. Even a few ornaments from out childhoods in the 50's and 60's. No commercial ornaments on our tree for at least 28 years.
Joe
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...o/P1010688.jpg
Beautiful tree, Joe!
How'd you get that perfect shape, on your tree? Attack it with a pair of Dr.Slick fine points?
Very pretty, and I also think; "homemade, gifted, and antique ornaments with some history behind them", make the BEST decorated trees.
Remember the "Aluminum tree fad, w/the revolving 3 color light wheel", of the late sixties, early seventies? God, those things were ugly!
Happy Holidays, Joe, to you and yours!
Paul
Beautiful tree, Joe! We don't put up a tree anymore. Just too much trouble but we may put one up this year to celebrate Amy's non cancer biopsy report! We contribute to the efforts of our land lord's son as he decorates the duplex. I will post picture later. We aren't done yet. Here is a teaser, we have to draw the blinds to be able to sleep at night! :shock: :D
From 2006:
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h2...IMGP0084-1.jpg
Well I am 2/3 done with cleaning the place, in case my landlady comes in while I am in Denver this week. Other than that, nothing changes. My last Christmas tree was the first year my ex and I had a real place together (somewhere ca 1990), and we had to hang rooster tails and steelees on the tree because we couldn't afford ornaments. 30 plus million real christmas trees cut and placed in people's homes every year, I don't need to contribute to that.
DG
Doug,Quote:
Originally Posted by DG
If you spend a little cash on a artificial one no one will know the difference once they are decorated. Also, most of today's live trees are farm raised just for that purpose just like the food you eat. No more going into the woods and cutting down a tree but even that is not harmful if you harvest properly on your land. Some states collect live discarded trees to put in their still waters for cover for aquatic life. Also, one can buy a potted live tree and then donate it to groups like The Arbor Day Foundation to be transplanted.
Heck, lots of game farms will take them in for cover for wild game. We have an artificial tree bought after Christmas one year for 75% off! I do not ever recall my family throwing out a live tree though I know people do it. When I see this I help them find an alternative to disposing of the tree in the garbage unless their community uses the tree for good purposes.
Just my 2 cents worth. :D
I have no problem with "tree farms," as they create jobs and replant trees every year. Pines grow 12" or more each year, so it does not take many years to get them to market size.
Our community collects the discarded trees and recycles them along with yard waste as compost, so there is no waste. It's actually a pretty good cottage industry in my neck of the woods, with dozens of tree farms dotting the surrounding counties. We also place them on the ice and weigh them down with cement blocks. At the Spring melt, they go to the bottom and become fish habitat for many years.
Our artificial tree is in its fourth year, and the previous one was used for 16 years before being donated to a local community group who still use it. I'm lazy in my later years, and don't enjoy tromping around to cut or a buy a tree.
Joe
On some of the reclaimed strip mines in your area that is about the only thing that will grow. I know because I was born and raised in Grove City, Pa. some of the really old mines are now great fisheries for bass and warm water species. The pines were planted on their banks and spoil piles to help prevent soil erosion.Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Valencic
Joe,
I really do want to meet you sometime and wet some lines together. A big pat on the back to you and your community! :D
Hey Joe ! Great post, great looking tree...we're artificial here too but we have a lot of homemade ornaments dating back to the early 70's, heck I even made/helped make a bunch of them...bet you have Christmas tunes on what appears to be a Bose. Did you make the mantle and is that a gas jet or is it the real deal? Good lookin' room all around. Merry Christmas friend ! Whoa, I'm slippin' into Christmas !
Cheers,
MontanaMoose
Our tree looks very like Yours does with the same angel on the top except ours has a burgendy dress on it.
We bought a ceramic winter scene to fit into our Christmas village. It is supposed to play 40 different Christmas tunes . It does sort of. 35 songs are traditional Christmas tunes but interspersed among them is Pop goes the weasel, Good night Irene, The French national anthem, give a little whistle and one tune none of us even recognised. It would seem that the Chinese haven't quite caught on to the North American ways 100% yet :lol:
This is me and yep the beard is real.
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d1...Santa008-1.jpg
Two of my dogs, Casa and Bud. Together they are a case a bud!
The fence around the tree is called the dingo fence.
Casa is a chow hound and likes to open presents on spec.
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d1...r/HPIM1236.jpg
Yahoo our cristmas cactus bloomed after 20 years of not blooming.
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d1...yer/Cactus.jpg
Our tree
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d1...Flyer/Tree.jpg
Eric, I hate to see good cropland turned into a place to grow decorations. At a thousand trees per acre, 30 million trees is a LOT of arable land. It takes 1.2 acres of land to feed a person in the US now, so 25000 people's worth of cropland just to grow decorations...
And a tree farm is in no way a forest, so I can't count it as such.
But it creates jobs, adds a billion and change in product to the economy, thins the forest here and there, and makes people happy, so...
Recycle the tree. I spent years trying and failing to get the local water district guy to let me use christmas trees to make fish structure in the city water supply lake back in CA. Oh well.
Montana Moose,
Yes, the fireplace is gas logs (Majestic) and I made the mantle, trim and installed the marble facing and hearth extension. It was a fun project when we built the house over 15 years ago. The Bose came from my late Mother-in-law's estate, and we've been enjoying Christmas music on it since Thanksgiving, and think of her every time we use it.
Gnu Bee,
OMG, you look like the real deal!!!!!!!!!! I guess there REALLY is a Santa Clause, and he hangs out on FAOL. :lol: :lol: Fantastic that the Christmas cactus bloomed. They sure can be fickle. Enjoy it while it's here. Great tree and cute kids on the floor.
Joe
it's simple to make a Christmas Cactus bloom: on Nov 10th put it in a room you don't use, next to a window where you leave the shade open. the plant needs to know the days are getting shorter so it has to live in a room where you don't turn on the lights. ever since i took up flytying in the guest room, Best Fishing Buddy's cactus has had nowhere to bloom...do we need a bigger house?
Fish and Wildlife takes all the discarded trees they can get here at home and puts them in the local streams as a place for the young salmon and steelhead to hide from predators such as larger fish and raccoons and various birds. Also helps with stream bank erosion.
Rocky
Joe, Majestic, ok I'll have to remember that if I decide to have a visiting fly fisher/handyman install one, that and when I have the minor electrical repairs and some sheetrock and a little oak flooring repaired. Maybe a roof. Good looking mantle and trim there too. Yep, kinda guessed you'd have the Christmas music goin' on the Bose.
Cheers,
MontanaMoose
We use a white pine cut right here on the property... they grow like weeds.
They don't have the"full" look of a modern pruned spruce or fur, but have a "period" look that seems to fit our
c. 1780's home
Besides, they're free, something all good New Englanders can understand :D
The tree is decorated with family heirloom ornaments, some of which go back to the 1880s
In our area it is illegal to cut Christmas trees except on the power line right of way. Trees on the power lines are doomed anyway so there is no extra impact on the forest by taking one of them. When I was a kid each spring our dad would take us up into the hills where we had found some nice looking fir trees about the right size. We would take a machete and trim several trees into the proper shape, after doing this to a tree for a couple of years it would grow into a very bushy perfect Christmas tree. We took a couple each year , one for ours and one for my Aunt. One year to our dismay someone found our little grove of trees and took them all leaving nothing for future years.
Our current tree is a fake that we bought last year. Our previous one lasted 12 years. I went to a fake tree when one of our neighbours lost their living room and all their presents to a tree fire on Christmas eve 1993. It was a close thing but no one got hurt.
I love the new type of lights that run cool, take up far less energy to operate are much brighter than the old fashioned ones and best of all won't burn you if you should accidentally brush up against one.
Man didn't you just hate those strings of lights that wouldn't operate if any one bulb burned out. You would spend an hour testing each bulb till finally you just went out and bought a new string that worked.
My sister and her husband just got the very latest type of tree this year with built in lights. You take it out of its wheeled storage box, Set it up on its stand, push a button and it unfolds by itself. You add any ornaments you want and plug it in. Even the angel on the top is permanent.
After the season you pull down on a lever, it refolds up snug as a bug in a rug. Place it back in the storage box ( which is really a wheeled suitcase ) roll it into the closet and yer done. Pricey though, around $350.00 they said.
I do agree that some of those farmed trees are grown on agricultural land in a nurserylike setting. I don't agree with that idea, But most Christmas tree farms around here are grown up in the hills in poor soil. At harvest They cut the tree off, treat the stump with a fungicidal wax to protect it. Then it will grow another tree in a few years on the same stump. In my opinion as long as you don't clearcut an area, cutting down Christmas tree sized trees does the forest no harm as a new one will soon grow where the old one was removed from.
When I was a kid we would go to a tree farms either in Half Moon Bay or the Santa Cruz mountains and cut down our tree. One year we cut a tree that had a family of mice living in it. When we got it home and my dad offloaded it from the roof of the station wagon what seemed like a zillion mice scurried out of the tree. :shock: My mom was not a happy camper. :lol: I was 17 then and that was the last year we cut down a tree. Since then we have gone artifical and the offical word at my folks place is mom's allergies won't take the real thing. :lol: Now that I have a family of my own, I am thinking tree farm starting next year.
Here is a picture of our tree.
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a62...y/IMG_1594.jpg