The year Ryan and I got married, our Christmas decorating was very haphazard. This happens when you don't get home from your honeymoon until December 8th and haven't done one blessed thing to deck the halls.
Just a couple of weeks before Christmas, we made our way to Dull's Tree Farm, which I'd learned about through Twitter, actually, and found this scrawny little leftover tree.We named him Chuck, and we decorated him with random leftovers from the tubs we lugged out of the attic.
Last year, on our way home from our anniversary trip {which was to Indianapolis},
we found a tree farm near Noblesville {Stony Creek Farm}, and stopped on the way home. We got to ride in a hay wagon and pick out a little tree - and we named her Ariel. This time, we decorated her with the ornaments we'd been collecting throughout our relationship.
So this year, we decided to continue the tradition! Before we left Chicago to come home from our anniversary trip, I scouted out a tree farm that would be on our way home.
Kingma Tree Farm is kind of out in the middle of nowhere - but it's near DeMotte, Indiana. We thought this tree farm had the best selection {as in variety of sizes} of any of the farms we'd been to, and the prices were REALLY good.
They had a couple different fields, so we drove out to the one we wanted...and there were just trees EVERYWHERE!!!
We wanted a smaller tree - because again, this year, we wanted to use this tree for our own collection of ornaments, and it's not very big yet. We wandered around just a bit...and then we saw her!
She was perfect.
We named her Penelope even before we cut her down!!
She's all ours! They told us to leave our tree at the edge of the road and they'd pick her up, shake her, tie her up and we could be on our way! Sweet!!
When we got home, we set her up in our room:
She holds our ornaments again this year...our growing collection of memories from our travels and from major life events:
Braeya supervised the assembly...
I was there too. :)
This is one of my favorite traditions we've started. Every time we buy an ornament, I take a picture of it, and then I print them. I write the story of the ornament on the back of the picture, and then when we decorate the tree, I read the story of each ornament as we place it on the tree. I love this!!!
Ryan added our glittery, sparkly S for Shaffer...
And she's done!! Our Penelope!
We love our Penelope...and our tradition!
6 comments:
Love your traditions and love that you name your trees! You are making so many wonderful memories! Just curious: have you ever gone to the Gaither Resource Center in Alexandria? We love going there and I thought of you when we were there last week drinking our coffee, etc. :o)
I LOVE THAT PLACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They have the best frappes on the entire planet. Ryan and I went on a date there early on in our relationship...we loved it!! I don't get there nearly enough for my liking.
Penelope is perfection. :)
XOXO
What a sweet tradition!
We were on a field trip today and drove by a local farm (small I mean it's the middle of a suburban area) and now it's a tree farm/selling area. My adorable Jewish students went "you can buy trees!?!?! we want one!" I was laughing SO hard!
Polly - Thank you! We think so!
Tamar - I love that!! So cute!! Out of the mouths of babes!
I love your tradition of going to a different farm each year. And that ornament book is such a great idea! We do something similar for our kids, in that we buy them an ornament each year but I think I will start writing out WHY we bought them and put them all in a book for the kids to keep. Can you tell how much I just LOVE this?!?!?!
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