Christmas Willage Anyone?

Every year for the past 30+ years it has been a family tradition that we go into the mountains to cut down our Christmas tree. My first Christmas in my own house, I bought the perfect tree or so I thought. It wasn't too tall or wide and it fit nicely in the corner. Fast forward to two weeks before Christmas when I began finding green stuff or what I thought was tree sap. Oh no, it wasn't tree sap! It was just my luck that there tree bugs EVERYWHERE . . . and when I say everywhere, I mean everywhere! Bugs on the other side of the room, bugs on the fire place, bugs under my Cougar helmet . . . my new house with my first real tree was infested with tree bugs! GROSS! And, to make things worse the little suckers were fragile, so when you'd try to pick them up, they'd explode. We literally pole vaulted the tree off of the deck, vacuumed and cleaned like crazy.

The next year, I decided that I would rather not do a live buggy tree all over again and bought a fake tree, which didn't look so big in the store but was ginormous in my little house. It wasn't the same as having a "real" tree, but quite honestly I was extremely busy with work (it was the year the Seahawks went to the Super Bowl) and really didn't have time to stop and enjoy the holidays let alone the ginormous tree in my house. November 2006 quickly rolled around and I was just not in the mode to recruit my dad or friends to help carry and set up the tree plus it felt like I just had taken down my tree. Everyone kept giving me a hard time because I love the holiday season and decorating. So, I decided to do something a little different and began a Winter/Christmas Village (we call it 'The Willage'). My 'original' Willage consisted of three pieces - the Church (from Will), The Globe Newspaper (from a friend) and I purchased the Coffee Shop . . . and whoa la, I had my own 'Christmas in the City Willage.'

2006 Willage - notice that I didn't have any even have snow :)

2007 Willage

2008 Willage

I still really love and enjoy the 'real' Christmas trees that my parents, sister/brother-in-law and friends put up, but for now my house has a Willage . . . .and I love it!