Decorating for Christmas

We put up out tree today but it didn't feel much like Christmas time. The temperature was in the low 80's and I worked up a sweat just hefting the cypress inside. Jilda spent most of the day decorating the tree and the house with all our Christmas stuff. We've collected a lot of stuff through the years.
In years past we would have made hot apple cider to drink while we decorated. Jilda has this world famous recipe. She pours a gallon of cider into our large coffee percolator and puts in a bag of those little Red Hot Candy where the coffee usually goes. She also throws in a few garlic cloves and some others mystery stuff but what comes out is killer cider. Anyhow, just thinking about that hot cider in eighty degree weather made me sweat even more so we skipped the cider but the tree still turned out well.
We’ve been using live trees that you can plant ever since we been in our house. We moved into our house on December 11th 1983. We were so excited as the workmen were finishing up. We didn't know at first if we'd be in by Christmas but we had a stretch of good weather and the carpenter gods were with us.
Our great-room has floor to ceiling windows and on that first night we hauled in a mattress and laid it on the floor in front those windows. We bought some cheap champagne and had a little gratitude ceremony. Before we fell asleep, a small deer ran into our yard and peered in through the windows for a moment before scampering off. I took that as a good sign.
Over the following days we moved all our furniture out of the single wide 12x65 trailer and into our new home. We lived in the trailer for ten years and we never missed it....except when it rains.
Our Christmas tree was a white pine that we bought from our friend at Four Seasons. It came in a big ol' bucket and we put it in a number 3 washtub and decorated it with all white pearl lights. It was the prettiest trees I had ever seen. After Christmas we dug a hole just outside our great-room windows and planted the pine not knowing if it would live or not. It did and today it is at least forty feet tall. We have bird feeders in it and it is one of the small pleasures that makes life fun.