Germlisch: Christmas

So we got a Christmas Tree stand! Funny story behind that..

I decided that I ~~wasn't too lazy~~ wanted to walk to the store yesterday, Sami in tow. (It's perfectly normal to walk to the store in Germany, and leave the dog outside where the bike racks are. And, nope, nobody tries to steal your dog. I always bring snacks or buy snacks for her so that once I come outside, she has something, too.)

Anyways.. I went to the little discount store "Netto" near my house. It is the closest to my house, so of course I'm going to look there first. They have a small little rack of Christmas shit, and buried beneath all of it, were 2 or 3 boxes of Christmas Tree stands. Sweet! I thought, thinking I saved myself from walking anywhere else. And it was on sale. Sweet! So I buy the stand, get Sami (first she got her snack), and head on home. It's less than a 5 minute walk from my house, but still, being pregnant, some days it's quite the accomplishment.

I get home and, very excited to get my Christmas Tree up and decorated, started trying to put the stand up. There were even directions in the box on how to set the damn thing up. Now, I can read the instructions (which are in German, of course), but there were also pictures. So I just followed the picture directions.

After 10 minutes of trying to open the damn stand, I decided to try and read the directions.

OK, I read the directions. OK, I think I got it.

Try again.. Nothin'. GETTING PISSED OFF HERE!

This should not be such a difficult fucking task. I'm pretty sure I was fiddling with this damn thing for 30 minutes or so before I decided "Okay, belleh' is grumbling. Let's feed the belleh' and then try again after.." So I made some food, ate, and then my sister back in California popped online, and we Skyped for a while. I even showed her the stupid thing on camera and showed her how frustrated I was with it. I thought the damn thing was broken, and figured my options were to either:

A) Take it back to the store. (Which means putting my jeans back on so that I don't look like a hobo in my sweat pants, and I wasn't really feelin' it.)
or B) Wait for husband to get home from work and see if he can fix it. (AKA use his strong man hands to force it into the position it's supposed to go in. If he can't do that, he'll break it and then buy me a new one. hahaha.)

Soooo, two and a half hours later, husband gets home. This is pretty much what went down:

Him: Hi babe. *kiss* How are you? Oooohhh! *He see's the box for the stand on the table.* You got a stand?
Me: Hi babe. I did. Do you see the Christmas Tree up and decorated...? There's a reason it's not up..
Him: Why? What's wrong?
Me: The damn thing won't work. I don't know if it's broken or if I'm a fucking idiot, but there are PICTURE directions. It shouldn't be that hard..
*He grabs the stand and tries to open it. Doesn't work*
Me: Here are the instructions if you want them..
*He reads them for two seconds. Looks at stand and with one finger, like a fucking magician, CLICK! The damn thing opens up and VIOLA! Done.*
Me: WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO?!
Him: Pushed here.
Me: I did that a million fucking times!
Him: You did it wrong.

Long story short, the Christmas Tree stand works! hahaha. Husband brought the tree in and put it up for me. Then he left to go to the gym and I finally got to decorate.

This is also when I found out that the lights we bought for the tree were only about a third as long as they need to be. Super! Gotta buy more.. It's okay though. I just decorated with what I had. Balls. Lots of balls. At one point, I was making fun of my Christmas Tree full of balls. Hell, I still am. But I had ribbon as well.

My plan was to make one big ass bow, and a bunch of little bows all around the tree, but I didn't like the way that the big ass bow ended up looking with both ribbons together. So I used Pinterest and Google for about 5 minutes to find pretty ideas on how to make this giant bow that I had in my head and found some good leads.

I used a few ideas from random things I read here and there and VIOLA! Big ugly bow done. Okay, it's not so ugly, I kind of like it. I just wish I could make it look better. But this is my first attempt at something like this, so I'll take what I can get.

Now, I took a photo of the tree in the daytime because the lights are not long enough to reach from top to bottom, and thus, it looks kinda funny right now. Otherwise, I think I'm actually satisfied with the way it turned out. I still need to get a skirt to put underneath it, but that can be added when I find one.

Do you have your Christmas Tree up yet? Comment and link up your blog here!

Okay, so maybe Christmas itself isn't here, but we got our Christmas Tree today. WOOHOO! I can finally start decorating. Hold up, there's just one little problem..

Background: We moved this past February a state away when my husband received an awesome job offer that he just couldn't pass up. When packing things up, he ordered a big ass trash container and threw so much shit away. Yes, I say shit because there was so much SHIT sitting in the basement and the attic doing nothing but collecting dust. (I was on a vacation visiting my family in California when the move happened, and husband was actually happy that I didn't see all the shit.) Shit that got thrown away was not of sentimental value, and most of it was just things that reminded my husband of his ex-wife. Which, of course, meant they had to go..

Among the things that got thrown away were my Halloween decorations and the Christmas decorations. It should be known that he was NOT supposed to throw away my Halloween decorations, as Halloween is my FAVORITE HOLIDAY EVER and I sort of go all-out. (To which he says "Oh well, buy it again." MEN!) Thus, Halloween was rather sad in my house this year, as I have to start my collection all over again.

Now I currently have this Christmas Tree and nothing to put it in! So you ask, "Why would you buy a Christmas Tree and not a stand?" We didn't buy it. It was gifted to us. Sweet! A free Christmas Tree! AmIRight?

This is currently the sad, sad Christmas Tree, wrapped up in the entrance to my house. And look! There's Sami asking WTF I'm doing. haha

Now, I know exactly where I want to put the tree. I have it all planned out. I'd like to put it here, under the stairs. It's currently dead space, anyways. And if you look closely, you'll see Sami, once again, on the couch, popping up in the picture. She always seems to make her presence known.