Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

Behold, this, our first real Christmas tree! He's from the Maritimes - Nova Scotia I believe. What do you feed Maritime Christmas trees to keep them feeling at home and alive? Rum? Scotch Whisky?

After a long and involved search for LED Christmas lights, we finally bought this tree at Rona and trimmed it last weekend. We're quite pleased with it. We named our tree Jonah, or maybe it was Jonas...I can't remember because this has been a busy week and I haven't spent much time with Jonah since we dressed him up and plugged him in.

He fills the house with a lovely pine aroma, which is supplemented a little by a lovely white candle that is also supposed to elicit the aroma of Christmas...it really works! I'm not sure why we got a male tree this year. We just did. He sits in the little alcove of the bay window and still gives us lots of room around him for the dining room table. It makes me feel that all the headaches, waiting and letdowns that occurred around the reveal and restoration of that bay window were all worth it.

Jonah is decorated with those old fashioned glass balls. I'm sure you can still get them, but ours were made in East Germany, which doesn't exist anymore. They were left in our basement when the former owner moved out. She left quite a few things behind...a leaky roof, lowered ceilings and lots of wood paneling, not to mention an electric knife and some old rusty tools, but these Christmas tree decorations actually came in handy. I'm not sure that we'll be keeping them all, but they should do for this first lean Christmas in our house.

Sadly, there are no presents under Jonah at the moment. We decided not to get each other presents this year. The house seemed to be a significant enough present in itself. I think enjoying time with friends and family will be the best present we could hope to have. And we look forward to visiting others and having visitors drop in...there's not much to see...we are still on the hunt for a sofa and actually need some interior decorator expertise, but we're happy to be in and enjoying our home.

We are slowly still moving in and unpacking. Yesterday Jamie put up the last of the bathroom fixtures - towel rail, ring and medicine cabinet etc. It looks great - we'll be putting the finishing touches on it over the holidays. I'll send an update on the mostly finished bathroom next. Very much enjoying the heated glass tile floor!