Tag Archives: Christmas Mystery Tree Tradtion

Mystery Tree 2017

We are again pleased with our stress free Mystery Tree for 2017. We bought it at Home Depot this year and brought it home tied up with string. We skipped having it netted since we had the truck to bring it home in. This is a tradition we have kept going for several years now borrowed from my sister-in-law.

It’s a taller and chubbier tree then we’ve had in the past few years. My decorations have always been down home not fancy. Red glass balls that have now seen better days and ornaments we’ve received or collected over the years.

Our new ornament this year is Addy’s hand print and she turned 9 months old on December 20th!

Looking forward to the day that Addy will be able to enjoy the hands on Nativity sets.

I’m pleased to say that all the gifts I’m responsible for are wrapped and under the tree. Now I’m moving on to making the shopping lists for the meals we will enjoy on Christmas Eve and Christmas day.

I’ve been asking myself what day it is each day this week. How are things going for you?

Mystery Tree 2016

2016-12-13-sounders-paradeThis year while I was having fun downtown with our oldest, Dear did the honors of picking out the mystery tree and bringing it home. He set it up in it’s designated spot this year and waited for me to come home from gallivanting and to cut the string while I watched the reveal. Another stress free tree that will serve our purposes well.

flash-xmas-019Dear put the lights on and then I added the ornaments.

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flash-xmas-044This will be the room that we discover what things are in our stockings and where we open the gifts from under the tree. This year our immediate family decided to draw names instead of buying gifts for each one. Dear is unemployed and has been unemployed for 6 months now. Our daughter Katie and Andrew are not employed. Andrew is going to school full time in Aeronautical Engineering courses at the University of Washington and Katie hasn’t found a part-time job yet. Dan and Jamie are moving into a new to them house right now. They are financially stretched and with the new baby coming Jamie will be quitting her job and staying home with our new granddaughter. Josh and Laura are still both employed and doing well. We all decided it makes sense to cut down on the gift buying. We will still have a wonderful celebration but with less wrapping paper to deal with.

Hope you are all in the midst of joy and wonder during this great time of the year. If not I hope you find that joy and wonder soon.

Mystery Tree…

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PM1910 (postmarked 1910)

Today over at Mennonite Girls Can Cook I’m sharing our Mystery Tree Tradition that we have embraced the last several years.

This antique postcard is a favorite one that we have from Dear’s Great great Aunt Emma. We still have snow on the ground but it has melted off the streets.

This afternoon we will celebrate the life of a friend who died suddenly a week ago Friday. He was only 69. We will see many old friends from our former church. I hope to hug his wife who was a faithful Sunday School teacher to our boys and several others and cherish the reunions. We are again thankful for the Hope we have in Jesus and the Hope Mick had in Jesus, our Redeemer.

I know not why God’s wondrous grace
To me He hath made known,
Nor why, unworthy, Christ in love
Redeemed me for His own.

  • Refrain:
    But “I know Whom I have believed,
    And am persuaded that He is able
    To keep that which I’ve committed
    Unto Him against that day.”

Cherish those God has put in your life today. Don’t put off giving words of affirmation to those around you. Choose joy!

Unveiling of the Mystery Tree

Some of you are new to my blog and aren’t familiar with a Christmas tradition we started several years back to take the stress out of finding the perfect Christmas tree. Our “Mystery” tree tradition goes like this…

We go to the nearest big box store and look for a tree in a certain height with a straight trunk and grab it with it’s string or netting in tack. This year the 6-7ft. trees in the Douglas Fir variety were about $25.00. We throw the tree in the back of the truck and head home wondering what it might look like once we cut away all the string.

This year it took most of the afternoon for the branches to relax as we had freezing temperatures here in the Seattle area and the tree was frozen. As it thawed we could see that it was another fine Mystery Tree choice. We’ve resigned ourselves to be happy with however it might look. Once the lights and decorations are added I’ll show more photos.

Slowly but surely it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas at this old house.

I was so excited to see that WordPress is continuing their tradition of adding snow to my blog for the month of December!

Have you gotten your tree or started your decorating for Christmas?

I’ll be linking up to ABC Wednesday for the letter U soon. Thank you ABC Team and Denise Nesbitt!