Decking the Halls - Day #3

                When most folks go to the tree lot to get their Christmas tree they pick one out, load it on top of the car and head home ... not my family. At the lot my dad would haggle with the lot owner to get all the "cast offs" along with our tree. Many times we ended up with two trees, yep two. One nice tree to decorate and one scrawny Charlie Brown kinda tree.



Here we are, headed home with our load of trees!

                At home daddy put the tree in the stand and into the house and we decorated it. These are the days of tinsel ... remember tinsel? There is only one correct way to apply tinsel according to Paul Pritts (my dad) one strand at a time. By the time all the tinsel was on the tree Christmas was over, the tree was dead and the Rose Parade was on TV. OK, OK, not that long but jeez!
             I bet your wondering about that Charlie Brown tree aren't you? All the branches were cut off and carefully stapled/nailed onto a plywood base. The bases were the size of our coffee table and the dining room buffet and another one was attached to the living room wall over the fire place. Once they were in place the decorating began. Remember those candles? The pink, blue and green ones with all that glitter?? Ya, those. They were carefully arraigned on the table and buffet, the shinny Christmas tree balls were added and finally the icing on the cake .... canned snow! Ah yes, he would spray the snow carefully all over the entire piece. That's why he needed so much glitter! So it would show through the snow storm.
Don't get me wrong, at night when the candles were all a glow and the tree lights were on there was nothing prettier in a 7 year old girls  eyes.
       Now all we need are some holiday treats ....