mini season's greetings

We had a dilemma. A small house + small children + wood stove + Christmas tree dilemma. We spent the last week working through our options and weighing all the factors, and the problem has been solved this evening, resulting in a very different look for our living room this year. A look that I'm finding surprisingly charming and just right.

Here's the deal. We do have a very small home, like European-small, especially for a family of five. While I dream of someday living in a big house with separate rooms for the kids and a place for them to play and not be directly under my feet, I am really quite happy with our little home. We've utilized the beauty that is IKEA in most rooms, and while I still believe that we have too much stuff, we do have some really fantastic organization systems. But every year when Christmas rolls around, we end up giving up a huge chunk of our living room to a tree. Several years ago, we purchased a beautiful artificial tree for an amazing price. It is most definitely a pain in the rear to assemble with row after row of individual branches to clip in, but it always looked lovely when it was decorated and all lit up. In our former living room set-up (and when we only had one kid!), we could make do for a couple of weeks with significantly less space, but with our current setup, and triple the number of offspring, it's a bit more challenging. Add to that the one year old that spends his days with us, and the idea of a giant tree in the middle of our play space was not attractive.

We considered getting a really thin live tree to try to put in a corner of the room that wouldn't be in the way, but we weren't sure that we could even find something slim enough to fit in the small space. And, we have a wood-burning stove in the middle of the living room and dining room space that is the main source of our winter heat, and we figured that a tree cut back at Thanksgiving time would be lucky to last 48 hours in our Sahara-desert-hot living room.

We looked at smaller artificial trees, too, but the thought of dropping $150 on another fake tree wasn't appealing, either. Seriously, the prices on those bad boys are outrageous.

Then, lovely hubby had an idea. What if we bought a small live potted tree? Could we find something that we could decorate, even a little, and then keep alive in the pot all winter until we could plant it in the yard in the spring? We looked at a local nursery last weekend, but only saw little trees that needed full sun when planted, something that our yard can't provide. Last night, hubby headed to his heaven on earth, The Home Depot, and sent me a pic on my cell. While it looked teeny-tiny on my phone, we talked a bit, and soon it was official.

This evening, we set it up on a little table in that small corner, and we rifled through our big box of ornaments to find the most special and lightest ornaments that would get called into action this year. One small string of lights and a short decorating time later, and we have our very own small potted mini-Christmas tree. Since he's going to be a part of the family, either planted in our yard in the spring, or perhaps just moved to a bigger pot on our patio, I suggested that he get a name.

I present to you... Charlie:


Yes, our little Charlie Brown tree is up, lit and decorated. He will grace our living room corner for the next few weeks, and after that we'll get to watch him grow for the next 12 months. If we keep him potted, he can even return next year for a repeat (and maybe a bit bigger?) performance. Dilemma solved! He fits perfectly, we didn't have to rearrange anything, and he takes away zero play space. It shouldn't be too difficult to keep him well watered and healthy, and it shouldn't be too challenging to keep all the kids' paws off him. Add in the environment-friendly angle, and we've really found the perfect solution.

The best part, though, was hearing the kids ooh and ahh over Charlie. Not one "It's so SMALL!" was heard, with "It's beautiful!" in its place instead. The kids were happy to have something special to mark the holiday, even if it's only a little something. Too often we try to make things bigger, thinking they'll be better, but right now, I'm really pleased with our little tree in our little living room in our little house. That seems to be just right for right now.




Finally getting into the holiday spirit,