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Last night Bryan and I put together our trusty artificial Christmas tree. People often mistake it for real, which is a sign of a great artificial tree. We also strung the lights, which is the worst part of Christmas-tree preparations. I wish we had a pre-lit tree, but for a pre-lit tree of the same quality, we'd have to for over some serious cash. So each year we string our lights... Which usually means Bryan strings them awkwardly, I critique, and we adjust until we are happy with the result.

The lights are a story in and of themselves. Each strand is short. The original two strands are from our first year of marriage. We'd been married for less than four months and were broke of course, so I got them at either the dollar store or Walmart. Needless to say, they were short. They sufficed for the (free) real tree we had that year. The following year all of our belongings were up in my in-laws' attic and we were living with almost nothing in Texas. So that year I bought a $5 miniature tree and a strand of lights from Big Lots.

For our third Christmas, we were living at McChord and found this fabulous tree, deeply discounted, at the BX. After putting it together, we realized that we didn't quite have enough lights to cover the expanse (7 feet of artificial treeness). But we were able to light it artfully (ie, skimpily) and get by.

The following year we considered getting a couple of longer strands of lights instead of just adding on, but we felt like it was wasteful, so we added on another strand. So today, our big old tree has four strands of lights.

We really want to get the LED lights that are becoming more popular. The reason is twofold, bulbs that never go out and they only take a fraction of the energy to power. But of course, we're too cheap to go buy them yet. I did look for them after Christmas (read: discounted) but couldn't find them. I will try again this year.