cold wintery mornings, cold hands, red noses, sitting by the fire with a hot chocholate, watching christmas films, hot water bottles. whatever winter means to you theres a good chance christmas features in it, well you cant get away from it can you even in a crazy year like this one!

so to that end we popped to the local garden centre to have a look for some inspiration and to try to get into the christmas mood, did we suceed .... not sure. let me explain, the displays wernt as good as normal ( understandable ) & the prices seemed a little high ( again understandable )  but that being said most people were keeping to the social distancing ( a few could obviously not figure out the difference between 2cm & 2 meters ) also a few people seemed to be having difficulty keeping their nose in their face masks, which detracted from the magical ambience the garden centre was trying to achive. it was bizzar in a way to be shopping for christmas decorations in the middle of a pandemic, even as my day job is working in the retail industry it still felt strange. so i took a deep breath in my mind & got on with the job in hand of doing what us brits do best & making the best out of a bad situation. 

then wether by chance or by universal intervention i walked around the corner & wham ! christmas trees, shed loads of them & omg if theres one thing to lift the gloom of winter its seeing shed loads of beautiful trees. wether real or artificial there is some thing burried deep down in the soul of those of us who celebrate christmas that just explodes with joy when we see our first trees of the season, clustered together in a garden centre or out in the cold night air of outdoors.

if you are the real tree camp you will then proceed on a planned night to go pick your tree, which is a feat in itself as 

when you are trying to decide which tree will

A - fit in your house

B - fit in car

all the while whilst trying to keep an eye on the kids & stop them trying to climb the bigger trees or get squashed when playing hide & seek amongst the trees.

there is something awesome about these magic moments but there is also a slight bit of sadness that your selected tree is slowly dieing. pushing that thought to the back of your mind you buy said tree manage again all odds to squash it into your car & once home realize you got too caught up in the moment & spend the rest of the evening sawing brances off, rearanging furniture, fighting with tree lights & finally sitting down to admire your work exhausted !

the artificial camp is not that much easier as you have to venture into the freezing loft & wrestle with the spiders who have their own ideas about whos loft it is & send their biggest baddest spider to scare you ( or that might just be my son  , he has assured me that is what happens in his loft ). 

once everything is down & your front room looks like an explosion in a tinsel factory, if you have pets then this is the day they love, trying to get into all the boxes to pinch baubles & errant tinsel with you trying to stop this all to no avail.

time to put tree up & 'fluff', then decorate with this years colour ( if you do that ) or decorate with watever ornaments your little darlings wether child or furry variety did not destroy last year. 

getting side tracked by memorys of long ago decorations or ornamnets draged up from the depths of your mind, wether happy or happy tinged with sadness, this process that should take a couple of hours at the most can take a full day or several days dependant on memorys & amount of items you decorate your house to celebrate this season. 

traditions which span life times are precious now 

lets not forget about the lights, oh the lights, tangles mess of bright to light up your tree, garden, house or garage these have been very popular this year & bring much needed joy to folks esppecially like me who when setting off for work in the early hours before many are even brushing the sleep out of their eyes, they make the dark roads glint with warmth & a smile. 

if you get a real tree you worry about the needles dropping before the big day, worry about them getting in fury feet of your fur babies or the kids hurting themselfs. 

then the day will be over the turkey eaten the guests have left ( if we have any guests this year being what it is ) pressants given & recieved and we sit in front of the tv or fire & realise all the fuss is worth it. with a smile and a mince pie you finally relax 

happy christmas & a awesome new year ( hopefully ) to all of fluffysmudges customers & followers we couldnt do this without you.

thank you x

this is one my daughters trees when we had decorated it for her