Decorating for Christmas

We won't be at home on Christmas this year, so it is hard to justify spending a lot of time decorating a Christmas Tree.

Last year, I bought a fake tree, so it was easy to got to the attic and stand it up. Every other year, it would mean to time consuming trip to get a tree, and haul it in, and then clean up all the needles. Plus my fake tree  has all its lights.

It took 20 minutes to put up, and I had all the lights on in another 10 minutes.

I was tired of the trees that I've done in the last few years with all the glass balls and silk flowers. The tree stood there like that for a few days, since there are a ton of lights on the tree, and it was unclear to me whether adding more stuff would make it better or worse. The lighted tree with the red LED's and white incandescent lights looked pretty good by themselves.

Lights look good at night, but during the day, it is too dull. One can't see the decorations at night, and one can't see the lights during the day.

I decided yesterday -- during the day, that all lights is too boring, so I put a few stuffed animals and nutcrackers on the tree -- just to be silly.

The fake tree is stiff enough to hold them. A real tree couldn't do that.  I got a few more $3 Christmasy animals.   I also put up a few glass ornaments to fill it out. They are too small to see on the photo.

So here is the 2009 tree, non-traditional, but fun.