Christmas Tree!
We spent Christmas 2010 in England, and therefore never bothered to buy a Christmas/Yule-tide/Solstice tree last year. This year we were planning to cut down a tree in our own back-yard, but when the time came it was already dark out, the tree wasn’t that pretty, and we were feeling lazy. End-result: Finnur drove to the nearest tree-depot and bough a tree.
It is customary in Iceland to put the Christmas tree up on the evening before Christmas Eve, so that’s what we did. As it happened, Bjarni and mom were delivering presents at the same time, so we got them to help out.
Anna and Bjarki walking aroud the decorated Christmas tree stand...
Mom finding yet another long lost friend on Facebook... 🙂
Bjarki boxing in my general direction. Behind him is the tree sitting in a bucket of near-boiling water. Apparently, cutting off 2-3 cm of the bottom, and immersing the tree in hot water for 10-15 minutes will make it less likely to drop its needles.
The only 'fail' of the operation was that Finnur forgot to drill a hole in the tree-trunk (for the tree-stand) before dunking it into the water... Must remember to do it beforehand next year!
This is what big sisters are for #giggles#. 🙂
The tree getting screwed in place...
The Garland Boy! 🙂
At this point in our lives we have a pretty random assortment of Christmas decorations. We discovered that we'd left a big box in Iceland when we moved to California, and while we were in California we went from having a tiny plastic tree, to a slightly larger live tree.
The top's in place and some of the lights are too.
We began with some purple on top...
... but settled on a mostly gold/red combo.