Every finger shall have its ring

little tree
by: e.e. cummings (1894-1962)

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower
who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly
i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid
look the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,
put up your little arms
and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy
then when you're quite dressed
you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they'll stare!
oh but you'll be very proud
and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we'll dance and sing
"Noel Noel"

I haven't done a blog hop in a while, but when I stopped by the Kelly's Korner blog today and she was hosting a "Show us your Life: Christmas Trees", that poem was all I could think of. I knew all of my former English major poetry books with the pages dog eared to my favorite verses would come in handy someday. And how much do I love the fact that I could google and copy and paste the whole poem. Technology is amazing!

Anyway...the first photo is of our main tree. It is real. It is huge. Every year we bring home a twelve to thirteen footer and it still looks tiny in relation to the nineteen foot ceiling. I love that the kids are old enough to be excited about decorating the tree and are actually able to help. Granted there are a lot of branches with six ornaments hanging in a bunch, but they are on there none the less. We get each of the kids a Hallmark ornament every year that symbolizes something about them or that happened over the course of the year. All of those ornaments are so fun to get out and reminisce about why we picked those and the things they did when they were younger.


This tree is on our stairway landing. It is my "Gone With the Wind" tree. All of the ornaments are from the Hallmark GWTW collections. I love this tree, and I love that movie. Obviously.

The kids each have a mini tree in their rooms. Evan's is the tree I used to have in my office at work. It has seen better days. His is decorated with mini dinosaur and truck ornaments.


Hailey's tree is pink and has some pink glitter ornaments on it. As she gets older she will probably want to pick out her own ornaments to hang, but for now she is pretty happy with these.

I don't have a photo of Spencer's tree because he has no ornaments. He didn't have a tree in his room last year so we need to find some for him this year.

I also have a little tree in our room for the first time. I bought a new tree for the basement and the former basement tree went to the GWTW tree and the former GWTW tree is now empty. I was thinking it might be cool to get some little frames and make a photo tree.


This is the new six foot tree I bought for the basement. Trent's MSU Spartan tree. All of the ornaments are from MSU or at least Spartan themed. I also hung some green and silver balls on it because it is a pretty big tree. Our neighbor usually buys Trent the Franklin Mint MSU ornament every year so those are on there as well. I need to think of a clever tree topper. I tried to put the Spartan Santa hat up there, but it just didn't look right. I was realizing that the tree needed a tree skirt and was thinking of all the MSU fabric at Joann's - as if I need another project right now.

Here are my silver trees in their new spot on the bay window. I know they are not what you traditionally call Christmas trees but I love them. And you can see the present that we got last night outside the window.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!