Let me start by saying my kids think I’m nuts. They don’t understand how something that brings me so much stress could be something that I pour tons of time and energy into and REALLY love doing. Am I perfectionist? Maybe. Do I go overboard? Absolutely. Is it ridiculous? NOPE!

This year has been extremely busy and quite stressful. I have several trees but the main two are the bane of my existence. We have a giant window in the front of our house and that is where my main tree lives. This year in the middle of decorating with the same decorations I’ve had since 2010...I decided I needed a change. Nothing too crazy, but something different.

The front tree is Grinch themed and it had this whimsical hat as a tree topper. Husband HATES the hat and I let his negativity seep into the brain so the hat was gonna go for sure. Then I usually use deco mesh ribbon and this year I couldn’t get it quite right, so I ripped it all off and decided to do nothing but ribbon. Thank GOD my oldest was home from college because she is my Christmas decorations shopping partner. The other two could care less. I decided to do one of those whimsical spray toppers which resulted in my tree looking like it was wearing a hat.

Do you see it? It seriously is like a Grinch themed hat on top of the tree. Eventually I was able to make it look right and finished the decorating...at 2am! This tree literally serves no purpose but to sit in the front room and be seen through the window. We don’t put gifts under it, we don’t do anything in that front room, as a matter of fact there are days that the lights get forgotten about and don’t get turned on. Am I going to get rid of it? No. I have been told by my husband that I have to get new decorations next year. I don’t think he knows how much that is going to cost since I’ve slowly added to this collection over the years but here is the final product.

Time to move to the living room which is the tree that the gifts go under etc. I plugged it in and only 1/3 of the lights worked.

GRRRRRRR. I’ve always added lights to this tree because I never thought it was bright enough, but the tree worked. Now all of the sudden it doesn’t work. Also, guess what? Couldn’t find clear lights with a green cord anywhere in San Antonio when I was starting this tree. It’s like everyone decided to buy lights at the same time. 1700 lights later it was ready to decorate.

What I didn’t take a picture of was the tree after it was lit and the lights suddenly went out because I blew a fuse. I had to go through every strand and find the one that caused it. Little hint...you can’t plug more than 3 strands into eachother. FINALLY finished the elf tree.

We have the tree upstairs that is filled with all the kids ornaments they made while growing up. The viral Grinch tree that was sold out everywhere and I finally found it which has a single red ornament on it. My work tree is the last one to do and I will do that this week.

Am I nuts like my kids say or just REALLY full of Christmas spirit? Honestly, it doesn’t matter. No matter how much stress or time it takes me to get them done, it makes me happy. A happy mom at Christmas means everybody wins!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!