My family is making the trip out to New York for the holidays this year, so it falls to me to create the festive atmosphere in anticipation of their arrival. Hardly a chore, for I love Christmas. I'm not particularly into holidays generally (do not even get me started on New Year's Eve and Valentine's Day) but Christmas is different. It's a real holiday with real traditions and they are traditions I can get behind. Family, gifts, and live trees indoors.
So yesterday, in honor of his 30th birthday, Greg (along with Zenia) accompanied me to Union Square to pick out a tree and help me carry it home. OK, in actuality Greg was just being nice and agreed to do it in spite of it being his birthday.
Anyway, it being New York and me being cheap, the subway was our mode of transport for the tree.
Me carrying said tree on the subway platform (Greg is just out of view, but I love how it looks like I'm doing it all by myself):
The two of us making an effort to green the 4 train:
By the way, if anyone is in the market for a tree, I highly, highly recommend those from Van Houten Farms at the Union Square Greenmarket. You can get a pretty decent-sized, beautiful, freshly cut tree for $30-45. Now, the Cadillac of Christmas trees is probably at the stand in the southwestern area of the Greenmarket, but at twice the price of Van Houten, I couldn't really justify it.
Anyway, several years ago I had a weird Martha Stewart-esque fantasy of collecting one beautiful ornament per year (preferably on the after-Christmas sales) so that on the day, far, far into the future, when I would be hosting my own Christmas and having my own tree, I would have a complete set of ornaments. Well of course that never happened so I had to enlist Zenia and Greg to help me make some. We did quite well with our Martha Stewart glitter and foam snowman cutouts. Combined with my Walmart lights that I got on wonderful trip to rural Pennsylvania last weekend (hi Vinay and Ellen!), the tree is looking pretty damn festive. Not quite done yet, but we're getting there.
2 comments:
We're going to have a tree? Oh boy!
Oh yes, with decorations and everything.
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