christmas-ing 2022 {tree hunting & decorating adventures}

Hello, my friends!

I am super excited about today’s post and I had a blast making it for you guys! Every year, the day after Thanksgiving, my family goes and rings bells for the Salvation Army, gets a tree from a tree farm where we cut it down, and then bring it home, put it up, and decorate it. It’s always a lot of fun, and I can’t wait to share these photos with you!

Enjoy some cozy Christmas photos and decorating inspiration!

getting our tree

For as long as I can remember, we have always gotten a real tree. Since we have a fireplace in our new house, we have to be careful to water it but I’m thankful that we can still get a real one since part of the experience is going and cutting it down.

I originally wanted a picture of Dad’s whole head but every angle I tried looked off, so we’ll have to settle with this one. Anyway, I love the lighting with the sun.

The tree farm that we went to was lovely–It was so bright and sunny there, plus, we were the only people getting a tree then so we had the place to ourselves.

Grandpa carrying the saw and scouting out a tree. 😉 My grandparents always have a harder time deciding between two people than we do decide through ten because my grandpa likes tall skinny trees and my grandma likes fat trees. It’s always fun, though, haha.

I can’t remember what these were called, but they were so pretty nestled in the trees. The lighting was beautiful that day.

Doesn’t this picture seem all wintery and wonderful? There’s plenty of bokeh and green in the background.

Christmas tree needles and bokeh. . . lovely as always!

I don’t know where the circle sun flare came from, but I like this picture–The lighting is a bit different than the others, but it’s toned down and darker. (I didn’t edit it so it’s all natural)

Some of the trees were so tall! We had to opt for a shorter tree than we usually did in our old house since the ceilings were taller. After debating over how tall or short our ceilings were, it was decided that we could squeeze an 8 foot tree in there and avoid scratching the ceilings. It all worked out in the end!

Just another but of nature. . . there were so many beautiful things around.

We rarely get long needle trees because they dry out faster and the needles fall off, but this one was very pretty to take a picture of.

Grace wanted a picture of her hugging a tree, haha.

My mom said they used to get cedar trees for Christmas trees, but all of the cedar trees at the farm looked a bit sad and depressing as they could die at any moment, or we’re already dead, haha.

I asked Zekey to pose for this one and pretend he was hugging the tree. Let’s just say it didn’t work so well and he got frustrated that the tree was poking him, haha.

So many trees!

The sky was bright and lovely that day. We’ve had only a few sunny days in the past weeks, and looking at these photos has made things a bit brighter.

We decided on a tree, yay! This was actually the second tree we saw, but everyone had to look around and make sure there wasn’t anything better. Grace decided that she was going to cut it down so Dad held the tree while Malachi stood around idle and just watched since he often does the cutting. He did go and help me, grandparents, though, so he wasn’t completely useless, haha. 😉

Grandpa used his glove to mark a possible tree for their house. They didn’t pick this one because my Grandma thought it was too skinny.

Ezekiel helped direct Grace and Dad to get the tree loaded into the trailer. He’s so cute but must have slipped in the dirt somewhere since he had it all over his pants and boots. <3

One last picture of the tree farm! It was so beautiful up there on the hills, plus the sky was bright, and it wasn’t deathly cold which is how it often is when we go to get out tree. I was quite thankful for that since we had already stood outside for an hour+ ringing bells for the Salvation Army.

decorating adventures

Decorating is always a process that takes a few days at our house. We got our tree on Friday (the 25th) and didn’t decorate it until the next week on Saturday ’cause we didn’t have lights and had to find all of our decorations.

Our poor tree suffered quite a bit when getting it trimmed (I don’t have pictures because I was getting ready for some friends to come over!) and it had to go in and out of the house twice to get trimmed more so it wouldn’t scratch the ceiling. It turned out to be fine and all is well that ends well. 😀

I love the gingerbread ‘P’ that my aunt gave Grace, Malachi, and I when we were little. Malachi has the most ornaments because he’s the oldest, but Grace and I are not far behind. 😉

We had to rush in decorating because we were going to help decorate our church afterward but it was still lots of fun.

Malachi provided plenty of Christmas music through his speaker for decorating. . . I love the shadows on the speaker in this picture.

Zekey was very helpful to hang up ornaments. Mom and I did go back over later, once the younger kids were outside since there were parts of the tree with hardly any and other parts where the ornaments were so close they were clumped and hitting each other. o.O

This one is a happy one. <3 A bit blurry, but sometimes, blurry happiness is better. I also love the way I edited it in B&W.

(Tiny side note ~ Levi does not have anything wrong with his back. xD I had to blur out his shirt for privacy reasons ’cause my siblings like to make it complicated and wear shirts that have where we live or our name on them. :P)

For some reason, my camera doesn’t agree with capturing lots of light. I’m working on figuring out how to fix it, but here’s another slightly blurry one. I often like to sit next to the fire and write or work on a letter to penpals because it’s sad to go to my chilly room and freeze while I do more productive things.

Mom did a lovely job with decorating the mantle and living room. . . I love how it turned out.

I also tried drying oranges for the first time! I hung them up on the (fake) Christmas tree in my room, along with popcorn that Grace and I strung.

They were super simple to do and they smelled lovely. All you have to do is slice oranges (or any sort of citrus fruit–I actually used Orange Cuties because that was what we had on hand) and bake them at 180 Farenhieght for 8 hours. Our oven has a dehydrate setting so we used that and our air fryer rack. (Click here to see the full tutorial I followed!)

We have a smaller tree (also fake) that we use for our 25 Days of Christ Devotional Ornaments that we read each morning and then hang an ornament. It’s a wonderful way to prepare for the season.

And the finished product! I love the variety of ornaments we’ve collected over the years. <3

And to end this post, a slightly cliche but fun just the same ornament photo.

That’s the story of our Christmas tree this year! I hope you enjoyed it, despite the strange detours, haha. Getting a Christmas tree and decorating it is one of my favorite holiday traditions.

Do you have any interesting Christmas tree stories? Do you get real or artificial tree? Colored lights or white lights?