Here’s what our tree usually looks like, but I’m not putting one up this year.
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I love seeing everyone’s trees!
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I’ll switch ya fresh cut trees. I really wanted a fatter and little taller one than what we got cause I have room for it!!!
Regarding stockings, we never hang stockings until Christmas Eve. I’ll admit that part of that is my doing that I made that tradition when the kids were young cause the mantel looks TOO MUCH once you add the stockings and stocking hangers. I prefer my mantel stocking-less!!!
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Loving the pictures! Not in the mood to put ours up this year. We usually decorate the mantel, have candles in the windows and lights outside in addition to the tree. Tree is a travel theme tree - all ornaments from our different trips. Putting up the tree and the ornaments is a good walk down memory lane. Travel ornaments got to be so many for our relatively small fake tree - so I cut out all the regular ornaments we had collected over the years…
Our tree is a mish mash. With colored lights. I really love blinking but the set I’ve been using stopped blinking a couple of years ago and I’ve been too lazy to try to fix it. SIL has been giving us her historic city’s souvenir ornaments every year since about 1995. They started taking up most of the tree so last year I put them on a 5 year rotation with the previous year and those from 5, 10, 15, 20 etc years ago.
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Raise your hand if you try to “fix lights” when they stop working. If you save those little packages of extra bulbs.
My hand is NOT raised! When they don’t work, into the trash they go!
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You can buy a separate controller for your non-blinking lights, just plug them in and select a blinking pattern. 
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We have fixed light strands before, but not with bulbs. We switched out those little metal things.
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It depends on how bored my Mr. is at the moment. If he feels like messing with broken strands of lights, he really digs in (of course, before I get my hands on them and chuck them).
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This. And when the lights on our beautiful fake tree die…it gets tossed too.
I appreciate the strings of lights now that do NOT all gone poof when one bulb is out. I will use a strand of lights that has a few random bulbs out - but it’s over when a section of bulbs is out.
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I also don’t replace a strand if just one light is out. We have a few ornaments that plug into the lights. H does those, but I take everything down and am too lazy to replace them. So there are plenty of lights out here and there. That’s why I put on 15 strands! Not really. I can’t tell one missing. But a whole strand? A new one is $2.50-3. I can handle that and I always keep a few extra boxes white/colored in reserve.
When our prelit tree first started to go, I just added a strand on top of the burnt out ones. But after 3-4 went out, it looked too bad. So I took them all off. It was pretty awful. It took 45 min per strand to break all of the clips. But now I just string them manually like a regular tree. But that sucker takes two hours to string. So this year I tried to make it so most of them can stay on after I take it apart. We shall see.
Our tree is always a mish mash of ornaments. This picture shows my 2020 pandemic ornament and the hand painted one below is my 2021 ornament from D2’s artist friend.
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We have the 2020 ornament, too!
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Usually around Dec. 7 or so. This year we put it up on Dec. 12.
We always take it down on Jan. 2
We used to take tree down before we had to go back to work, right after Jan 1. This year we are leaving town Dec 29th, and won’t return until January 4th. Kid will be here watching our cats, so we aren’t sure if tree will come down early or late.
in Denver it is traditional to leave the outside lights up (and on) until the Stock Show ends (next Sunday). Last night I ran an errand and noticed a lot of the lights on my street are already gone. Very sad. And dark.
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Someone made a comment on our neighborhood FB page the week after New Year’s that said something to the effect: “Thank you to everyone who has left their holiday lights still glowing outside. As someone with depression especially in the winter, this helps me so much when I look out my window or drive at night”.
That gave me new perspective. (But I had already taken mine down!!)
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Many houses in our neighborhood still have their outdoor lights up, and some even still have their trees (I assume those are artificial trees).
We finally took down xmas last weekend. I did leave my holiday wreaths out and my “winter pots” - evergreens and faux holly.
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