Bruce The Spruce: A Christmas Tree Review

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With Christmas just over a month away I'm starting to make plans for the festive season, as I'm sure most mums are. Finding the decorations shouldn't be that much of a problem as they are still in the spare bedroom from last Christmas, waiting for me to sort them out before putting them in the attic.

Rather a large fail there then on my part.

However, my husband will have to go in the attic to get down the artificial tree that we have had for around eight years; it's one of those with a central 'trunk' that the branches are hung off and then plumped up. I've written about it before, and affectionately call it 'The Beast' due to it's gargantuan size and the length of time it takes to construct, but it is beginning to break in places and I have an impatient four year old this year who might not be happy to wait around for two hours while I construct the actual tree before being able to decorate it.

Therefore I was more than happy to be offered another artificial Christmas tree to review in the shape of the Alberta Pine Artificial Tree. During half-term The Boy and I (see, I can be grammatically correct when need be) had fun constructing our new tree.

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It's a decent size and quality artificial tree, consisting of three parts with the branches already attached which fold down and are plumped out to add depth to the foliage. It took us around twenty minutes to put together with The Boy able to help with a lot of it, and when completed it stood at a good height and width; The Boy loved it. There seems to be plenty of space for decorations to fill the tree up, although I felt it was a little sparse in the middle near the trunk. I would also have liked a bit more variation in the types of 'spruce' covering the tree, but there are plenty of other trees in the range which fulfill this.

Priced at £49.99 (down from the original price of £79.99) it is a good quality tree, and fits well into modern-sized rooms. It is advertised as being six foot tall which might be a little generous; I'm 5ft 10" tall and looked the very top of the tree eye-to-eye. However, what's a few inches between friends at Christmas time?

I was sent this product for the purpose of this review, my opinion is honest and unbiased.

The Gallery: It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

I seem to be running short of time to do The Gallery most weeks at the moment and to my shame, I had no idea what the theme was this week until Tara's e-mail dropped into my inbox at 6pm this evening. When I glanced at the theme I knew that I'd be able to easily take part as I'd uploaded these photos last night to Instagram.

For me, it always feels that Christmas is on the way when we get our 6 foot high and 4 foot wide Christmas tree out of the attic and assemble it on the first weekend of December. This is the gold, red and wooden decoration tree and the main one of the house. It's a big family affair decorating this tree with my doing the top, The Boy doing the bottom (under a teenie-weenie bit of direction) and Mr. TBaM doing the back.

These are my favourite decorations on the tree:

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A mixture of twee characters, home-made wreaths by The Boy and the robin which always nestled in my own childhood Christmas tree. I've bought The Boy one to have on his tree in the future.

Carefully unwrapping the treasures of Christmasses past is such a joy; watching The Boy discover his own decorations which we have bought him every Christmas brings back a rush of memories from each festive season.

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Hopefully his future partner will like the decorations and allow him to use them on their tree when he's an adult!

Incidentally, I'm trying to start a hashtag on Instagram so I can have a nosey at the glitz and glamour on other trees. I'd love it if you'd join in? Search on #showmeyourdecorations.

Our Story of Christmas

On Sunday morning, we got up at a reasonable time and headed off to a garden centre on the other side of Cardiff. I'd been informed by a work colleague that it had a brilliant grotto with Santa and his missus, so that was good enough for me. Out of the three of us, I was the most excited as Mr. TheBoyandMe is a man and it takes more than that to get his enthusiasm enthused on a Sunday morning, and The Boy has not a clue who Father Christmas is.

With enough inner mistletoe for the three of us, we plodded off and found that yes indeed it had a fab grotto with Saint Nick and every-fink! Including a two hour queue!

With Mr. TBAM promising me that he didn't mind if I returned the next morning with The Boy, we had a good gander at the decorations and the pretty lights, played with some expensive carousels that we shouldn't have and explored the multitude of Christmas trees ready to be lovingly picked.

Upon arriving home and wolfing down our lunch, Mr. TBAM went into the loft and got our bargain Christmas tree (£100 reduced to £20 in a January sale five years ago), put The Boy to bed and I got busy 'growing' our tree, took me an hour to do what nature takes decades to do. (Plus no needles, no sap and no rash! Hurrah!)

When The Boy woke up and came downstairs, he walked into the dining room to see the six-footer twinkling away with over 160 white lights on it. A very different reaction to last year, as he paused, took a little step back and burst into the biggest grin ever. We then spent the next hour decorating the tree together, and his skills have definitely improved since last year as he put one decoration onto one 'branch' and didn't take them back off again; always a bonus!

And so to the title of this post:

Christmas 2009: Jingle Bells

Christmas 2010: Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus

Christmas 2011: A Smelly Stocking

This is the star I bought for our first Christmas together as husband and wife ten years ago. Fitting that it's placed on the top now by our child.

You see we buy The Boy a decoration each year to go on the tree, and write on it to commemorate the year it was given. This way when he moves out (at the age of 59, certainly not a day before!) and decorates his own family tree he will already have a good collection of quality decorations to start him off.

I'm linking these up to three great Christmas linkies

CreatingChristmas

Mummy Mishaps' Christmas Tree linky

Thinly Spread

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