The Tree

Start To Finish...  And a long one; as someone said, "grab a beverage", LOL...

I was initially discouraged by all the branch and stem and twig adjustments needed.  It sat there with just the base opened for a week (I seem to have lost THAT picture sadly).  I dithered about returning it and buying a real tree, the amount of work to adjust all the ends was daunting, but adding all the lights to a real tree is no great fun either.

It seemed so balanced either way... 

But my earliest jobs required a lot of repetitive work, and I WAS good at that, so I considered managing all those bendy branches from a repetition work point of view.  They were assembled in a way, they must open in a way.  I found a pattern.  The internal branches go "left, right, up, down" just to fill in the background.  Its not like you are going to hang ornaments next to the trunk of the tree.

So I just started spreading the tightly packed stems and twigs.  The instructions said "10 minutes and you have a lovely tree".  HAH, HAH, HAH!  But 3 hours and I did!   just had to actually stnd there and DO IT.  The biggest annoyance and time-waster, was that the outer "new-season" twigs were flat on one side and full on the other, and they were almost always upside down.  Easier for the poor people constructing the trees I assume, but poor quality-control at the end of the production line.  I'll bet I had to turn over 1,000 stem-ends.  But only once.  Next year, I won't have to.

It helped to wear thin "driving gloves".  Those plastic needles can wear on you after a while.

So it was a good-looking tree after all the set-up.  It looks better than I expected, actually.

Then I turned on the built-in LED lights...  WOW!

With camera flash...

With slow-synchro camera flash...

With camera flash OFF.  The lights really shine that way.  And it looks the same with the room lights off.

And decorated!!!   With flash on...

And off...

Hmmm. ..  Didn't notice that one cardinal was fallen over...  Well, everything can't stay perfect.

I love real trees for the smell and reality.  And you don't have to arrange the branches.  And I'm not sure tree farms harm the environment.  They produce oxygen.  And I know one cat who survived under them until finding a Forever Home...

But fake trees have advantages too.  One lasts for a decade or so, they have 1,000s of built-in LED lights, they don't require watering so they are safer.  And in theory, they can fold up "OK" with the branches spread (but folded up, if that makes sense).  Well, let's just say it wouldn't fit back in the box, but it will take up less space than as currently spread out.  All the branches are on hinges.

I always hate to say this, given my general sarcasm to "Martha Stewartism" but this IS a Martha Stewart Tree...  (According to the box and I didn't know that at the time).  All I knew at the time was that it was a pretty realistic-looking fake tree...

But what finally decided me on keeping the one I bought was that the branches are sturdier than real trees and I have a lot of rather heavy ornaments.  Ornaments that I could not keep hung on real trees stay on this one.

But I have a lot of very light ornaments too.  So I think I will alternate between live trees and this one.  Best balance I can make.

Tomorrow, close ups of the decorations...  I forgot to use the macro setting and they were all blurry up close.  So I need to take new pictures.

But the close-ups are great, so tune in tomorow.