We inherited our Christmas tree from my grandmother quite a while ago.  
I am not sure how old it is, but I’ve seen baby pictures of myself 
sitting in front of it.  It’s a really nice tree..
 it’s been though several up dates since I’ve had it.
One year after the kids played chase around the tree, 
knocked the whole tree over, broke my angel and several ornaments, 
I built this kid/cat proof tree stand out of some scrap particle board 
and some plumbing parts.  Not beautiful.. but it’s so heavy it works great.
 Another year I replaced the center pole after it cracked.
And repainted the color coded ends of the branches
with dollar store fingernail polish.
Since moving to this house I’ve been admiring those new simmer trees.
My tree is so wide I normally have to take out a piece of furniture
to make room for it.  And being so wide made it look kinda straggly.
I often used  the string of lights to help support 
a couple of the bottom branches.
Mike and I went out Black Friday and looked at trees.
When I realized that most of them weren’t as nice as mine,
I asked Mike which size skinny
tree did he like the best.. 51″, 45″.. etc.  
My tree was 63″ wide.
then I did some math.. 
This is what it looked like after I used a hack saw 
to trim down the first two rows..
See how wide and straggly the bottom branches look?
And here’s my new slim tree.
I love it!  It looks much fuller and I only had to 
slide over my bench to make enough room for it.
Love,
J