The Adventures of the Empress of the Universe

Monday, December 3, 2012

Holiday Scents

When I was little, we had cedar Christmas trees... still love the smell of cedar...

...and around adolescence, balsam trees became available! Love the smell of a balsam tree..

...and they were available until sometime in the mid- to late-80s when Fraser firs took over the NC market.

Oh, a Fraser fir is nice but the trees tended to be pruned within an inch if its life to make it the perfect conical shape.... leaving nowhere to hang ornaments except on the outside of the tree.... no room to drape stuff or for ornaments to hang. And the scent... well, it was fine but it didn't come close to a balsam.

With my new little feather tree, I still wanted that balsam scent.... so I ordered a bag of balsam fir needles along with the tree.

I made two little sachet "pillows" from this bag...

... and they're tucked into the living room now. My house is going to be balsam scented one way or another...

Photo swiped from Sweet Reverie on Etsy

I've even heard of folks tucking smaller sachet bags of balsam in their artificial trees.... which I think is a cool idea!

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Oh Christmas Tree

Let's face it... dealing with a Christmas tree by yourself ain't much fun... and even less fun is taking it all down and storing it again. So... I've not had a tree for a number of years.

For some reason, I decided I wanted to have a small tree... something that wouldn't be a pain in the kazoo... and ordered a small feather tree. It arrived in the mail yesterday and, of course, I had to put it up right away.