Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Real vs. Fake

Well, M is definitely recovered from her convalescence. She's back to being a non stop kind of kid. The first two days so far this week have included things like "full of energy" and "She did lots of running and dancing today. She LOVES to move! :)" on her cards from daycare.

Now if A and I were just feeling better.

Total topic change:

We're having a little argument in our house about our Christmas tree. A wants a real one, I want a fake one.

I grew up selling Christmas trees with my family, I thought fake trees were horrible things. However, I've had a change of heart. Here are my arguments:

1. We have a small house with a small living room. We can get a fake tree that is narrow, and while it may not hold all of our ornaments, it will hold most.

2. I don't think M will want to eat a fake tree, or be able to easily get parts off like she could needles on a real tree.

3. Since we will most likely have to protect/fence in whatever tree we have, might as well be a narrow one.

4. No one else waters the damn thing, and I'm a wee bit scatter brained these days. It almost always dries out and since I'm the only one that takes it down, I'm sick of dealing with the cleanup.

5. It will pay for itself. A quality real tree runs around 50 bucks, a fake one (the one I like at least) 130. Three years, paid off. (ooo, and they appear to already be on sale)

6. Seriously, no needles to clean up.

7. We can always buy a wreath to get that nice fresh tree smell.


See, makes total sense, right? Fake trees look nothing like the pipe cleaners on steroids thing that my grandmother had. The one I really really love is pretty much this one I think. Isn't it pretty? And no clean up!

Are you real of fake tree people? I'm curious (if it will help my argument).

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

You want real support for your argument? Google "Christmas tree fires" and show your husband the results. Fake trees don't burn your house down 3 days before Christmas :)

Anonymous said...

We've got a fake one. But it had to look real & it's not bad at all! I think it's partly because it's got both long and short needled branches. Looks less "all the same so therefore fake"? I don't know, but we like it and even my folks said this weekend (unprompted!) that it looked very real.

So there's my tuppence about the tree!

Christina said...

Growing up, we only had real trees. Now? We have a fake, pre-lit tree for our house. It's narrow, because we have limited space, and it's easy to set up.

I don't want to deal with the needles dropping every day, watering the stupid thing, and then feeling wasteful when I throw out the poor dead tree on January 1. They make candles that are very close to the real pine smell, right?

Anonymous said...

We've got a fake. We always had a real one growing up, but it's more hassle and expense than it's worth (and there are all those needles!) THe fun part for me is putting up the ornaments, so the sooner I can get to that part, the better. Besides fakes these days look much better than they used to (we got ours from Menards). We do get a real wreath for the smell.
Also, with an older toddler, she gets to "help" set up instead of having to stay out of the way- S loves that! Last year she handed us branches, this year I am hoping she can help color sort.

Birdie said...

I'm a real tree kind of girl but I can definately see where you are coming from. If A wants a real tree that bad, just tell him that he will be responsible for all the set up, take down, clean up and toddler wrangling!

Birdie said...

I guess I should add to my comment that the trees we can get here in Wyoming tend to not be the big shedding ones (i.e., balsams)...and its very easy to hike just 500ft off the highway and find small, narrow trees. Xmas tree permits are also only $10 so it is the cheapest option too!

April said...

i finally won that argument and we now have a pretty fake tree with a pine tree scented glade plug-in nearby :-)

Marketing Mama said...

Sorry I'm totally late on this, but we have a pre-lit fake tree and I love it... I wanted only the "best" and most expensive, but it's certainly paid for itself over the 6 years we've used it so far. Nevermind that two strings of lights are out and I can't for the life of me figure out how to replace them.