Christmas Trees & Birthday Flowers!

 Today, I thought I'd share pictures of our Christmas tree that we decorated last night and my birthday flowers.

It's a fresh Frasier Fir, which I love because the needles are nice and soft. Years ago as a kid, the type of trees found on Indiana tree farms Scotch Pines, which were prickly to the touch, but popular because of their climate hardiness and good needle retention.
 Frazier firs are popular for their natural "Christmas tree" shape, good needle retention as well and excellent shipping characteristic.

You'll notice "dye-cut" Christmas card decorations on my tree.
Three are official Hallmark dye-cut cards---the rest are Bev-cut. Sometimes, if a card we receive has a really nice large central design on front, I'll glue the card sides together, then cut that design out, hole-punch a hole in the top, add a loop of yarn and---voila, my own "dye-cut" ornament cards perfect for filling gaps and hiding tree imperfections! The bottom branches of this tree are a bit "airy" and loose, so Hubby hid that a bit with my card ornaments. 

I had the pleasure of helping my sister decorate her tree while we were home for Thanksgiving and she has these cute little natural pine cone "Hedgehog" ornaments she likes hidden deeply in the tree boughs to be "found." (long story)
The "hidden" ornaments on my tree are Ninja Turtle ornaments! 

Tomorrow is my Birthday and I like to pick up some grocery flowers for the occasion to make an arrangement:

They didn't include this Poinsettia---that's a branch that broke off the ones in the container on my counter, when I was cleaning out dead leaves, so I added it to the vase. It looks nice.

There's a trick to using Poinsettia's as vase flowers, though: 

Their stems leak milky sap when cut and the outflow of that sap prevents them from taking in vase water. So, you MUST seal that sap by lightly waving the cut stem end over a lit match flame just enough to stop the sap flow, but NOT enough burn or blacken it!

Also seal any place a leaf has broken off, where it might be leaking sap as well.

 This now allows the Poinsettia stems to "drink" water in a vase.  The outflow of sap prevents it otherwise and your poinsettias will simply die.

Treated correctly, Poinsettia's actually make very, fairly long lasting nice vase flowers.
(Whether potted or vased, they usually last until all the tiny yellow flowers in the center, which are the actual flower part, finish blooming.)

Maintaining A Fresh Tree:

There are tricks to keeping a live cut tree in good condition for the length of it's Christmas season duty, too! 

I know my tree is drinking up nearly it's whole container of water up overnight everyday! For easy access, I don't put on tree skirt and presents until Christmas Eve.

So for best cut tree health:

1) Be sure to have the stem re-cut when you buy and try to get have them cut it at a tiny bit of an angle, so the tree stem isn't flat on the dish bottom. Flat it can't drink water well; slight angle and it can.

2) Don't put it up immediately---instead put your tree in bucket of hot water with 1 Tablespoon of lemon juice for at least one day. We usually lean ours against the house on the back patio while it's in the bucket. Leaving even a couple days is okay, but check the bucket and add more water as needed.
 This way it gets a really good drink of water before it's set up in the house.

3)  Once you put the live tree up inside: be sure to check and refill it's water dish DAILY with very warm tap water as it will drink lots every day for a good while during the season! 

It will look good longer and hold it's needles better this way. 

Gradually it will drink less and less water until finally it's drinking next to none, which means it's run it's course and done it's duty.