This post’s a little late but I wanted to share because I got my first real Christmas tree!

 

American Samoa is a tropical little island that doesn’t have a lot of pine trees, and certainly not any of your typical Christmas-tree looking ones. So every year, the local Rotary Club and Tool Shop collaborate to bring in a shipping container filled with nothing but Christmas trees. It’s not a lot a lot, but plenty enough for those of us on island who are pining for that holiday pine scent.

 

Growing up, my parents always had an artificial tree which was at the time way more economical and of course cost effective. Now, living in a small apartment with my boyfriend, we don’t have a lot of space to store a fake tree in the off-season. You might remember my little DIY Christmas tree last year – check it out here.

 

This year, since we’ve cut down on more of our material possessions and because Ian’s parents were visiting us for the holidays (and will meet my parents for the first time!!), I decided it would be fun and memorable to get a real Christmas tree!

 

We set the six foot noble fir in our living room and wrapped an old tapestry around the base to make it look cozy. I didn’t have a plan on how to decorate it but I knew I wanted it to be a little different and I wanted to use what I had.

 

I spent several hours one arvo cutting pieces of mis-matched fabric scraps I had leftover from other projects and sewed together a long string of colorful bunting to use as a garland for the tree. Ian and I put on some holiday music and hung up the upcycled bunting and string lights we had used for years. Our only actual ornament was a little stuffed knit snowman that Ian received in a care package his parents sent for his first Christmas in American Samoa almost five years ago. Other than that one which we’ve kept over the years, I don’t want to collect ornaments. So instead, I picked out my favorite instax film photos taken of friends and family over the last seven years and hung it up with colorful binder clips. I also made a few (like, literally three) other ornaments from air dry clay, and picked up a random few things around the house like rattan coasters and strung it up too.

 

It’s such a simple but meaningful Christmas tree to me!