Our First Christmas Tree

This year we will be celebrating our third Christmas in this house. It’ll also be our first year with a full-size Christmas tree! 

During our first Christmas, Ringo was a little puppy hell-bent on destroying everything in his path, so we opted for a tabletop tree instead. Last year Ringo was 100x better than the year before, but I still worried about him messing with a tree, so we stuck with our tabletop tree.  As a side note, we also got Abby that year, but she’s pure sweetness so we don’t worry about her messing with things. 

Anyway...

While shopping the after-Christmas sales last year I found an amazing tree at an amazing price. I figured Ringo would be well-behaved enough for a full-size tree by then, so I bought it. Seriously, I couldn’t pass up a $250 pre-lit tree for $62.50 (from K-Mart). 

Fast forward 12 months…
 
I wanted our first year with a full-size tree to be successful so I decided to introduce the new tree to the Ringo in stages. I set the tree up in the living room 2 weeks ago. I didn’t add any decorations because I wanted him to get used to having the tree in the house. He smelled the tree and got excited when I turned the lights on, but that was about it…off to a good start!
Three days later I added the garland. I was worried he’d grab a piece and accidentally pull the whole tree down, but he didn’t mess with it at all. 

This past weekend I decided to start adding ornaments. This is definitely the part I’m most worried about because most of the ornaments are shaped like his ball, so I can see him pulling them off the tree to play. I made sure to put the shatterproof ones towards the bottom just in case. So far the only incident we’ve had was Ringo swinging his rope toy too close to the tree which caused some of the ornaments to go flying (nothing was broken though). 

The white garland and red ornaments are all from after-Christmas sales and the white ornaments are from Savers ($0.99 for the whole box!).  The rest of the ornaments are sentimental ones and ornaments I’ve collected over the years. New items this year are the tree topper and poinsettias (from Michael’s). I still need a tree skirt, but I haven’t found one that I like yet. 

I’m so happy we finally have a full-size tree and I love how it turned out! Cross your fingers everything survives the rest of the month!