I'm FLOCKED!!

Many moon ago, I opted for a "fake" Christmas tree.  The real ones, although they smelled wonderful, left a mess of pine needles and pitch to vacuum up for the next six months.  I got a big beautiful put-it-together tree 9' tall and 6' wide instead.

Over the years, that wonderful tree began to shed it's pine needles too, not to mention how hard it was to secure each and every branch before hanging my own 18 boxes of lights.  In fact, it's so much trouble that I haven't set it up in years since no one would see it but me.

That's when I saw the television ad for Balsam Hill trees.  My ex-in-law-sister has several in her house and she's a really bad influence.  Flocked and decorated like they belong in Time Square, I wanted a tree like hers.  The price tag however, was more than over the moon, it was in another galaxy!!

After searching and searching, I finally found this beauty, 9' tall and only 4-1/2' wide ON SALE!!  Wasn't I shocked when it arrived at my door three days early ... a box so big I could hardly drag it through my door.

It's PRE-LIT, meaning the lights are actually built in to the branches.  No more figuring out what branch goes where ... just flip them down and set it up.  Easy Peasy!!  Yeah right ... except that each piece weighed a ton and I had a hard time getting it together.  Hanging off the top of a ladder trying to get the top section on wasn't in the instructions.

By the time I got two sections up, I had more flocking on the floor and myself than on the tree.  This stuff is insidious.  It sticks to everything like socks in a hot dryer.  The static electricity was a sight to behold.

At long last, it was together, but two sections of lights were not working.  Spread out the branches it said ... FLUFF them up!!  Once you do that, there's no way to see where the light connections ARE, let along see the color tabs to match them up.  

After thirty minutes of crawling underneath with a flashlight, I finally found one connection to make.  I came out looking just as flocked as the tree.  I never could find the second one, so one layer of the tree is not lit.  It's probably a fuse or something ... green plastic of course, so it's truly invisible.

I finally called UNCLE and sat down to enjoy the lights.  I didn't stay there long however, since I had half the house to vacuum.  Then came the second problem ... all that flocking stuck to the inside of the vacuum head where static electricity was the name of the game.  Every time I turned the machine off, a pile of white snow was left on the floor.  This was SUCH a bad idea!!

And it's not even Thanksgiving yet!!  The thing is, if I'm going to have to do THIS much work every year, I'm putting this baby up in October so I can enjoy it for at LEAST two full months.  Maybe I'll be the Grinch for Halloween!!

All lit up, it really IS very beautiful.  Cooper loves it too ... there's another rug on the floor he can use to play with his ball!!