I hope you're not rolling your eyes at me for talking about Christmas at the end of November, but guys you do know that December begins tomorrow and so the month of festivities begin! It wouldn't be Christmas for us without going to choose the tree {see this post from last year too}. It's become a tradition in our family, ever year at the

end of November driving up to Sarratt, a local village to visit Martin who has a whole farm full of trees ready and waiting to be taken home and adorned in lights. For every tree he cuts, he plants another in it's place. One magical year it was even snowy!

I love choosing them in the field as you can see the exact shape and height of it. We go for about 8ft for our lounge but my parents get a 14ft-er for their Barn conversion! We're hoping with the new house we can get a biggun next year with the high ceilings. The main benefit to getting one cut though is that they're super fresh compared to the ones pre-cut so they'll last for a good six weeks. We actually feel guilty when it comes to taking ours down around New Year as it still looks so perky! I've had a lot of people asking me how to stop them dropping needles but we never seem to have them drop any, bar when you're disturbing the base with presents. The trees in the garden centres got cut weeks ago and shipped over so by the time you get them home, they'll be drying out. The key is to get them into water as soon as you can, if they've been cut for a while the trunk will harden and will be unable to absorb any water. So it's worth cutting a little slither off the bottom to get it to drink more and then keep topping up the water over the next couple of weeks. Our lounge window also keeps it fairly cool, and I guess it helps that we don't have children or pets running around underneath it.

There are so many shapes, sizes and varieties.

Timber for Mum and Dad's beast of a tree!