What is perfect?

Usually we have these fabulous Christmas trees.  We have a cathedral ceiling living room and can get monster trees -- and have for years.  Last year I recall the tree not being all that spectacular, but it was fine.

But this year somehow we seemed to forget while picking it out that we have a large living room, and this tiny misshapen tree seemed quite lost in the corner.  And the shape of it, well, it looks like some Grinch-type being stole into our house and shaved off portions of this tree so that it would look ... wrong.

Last night we put on the lights and the cranberry and popcorn strings.  I kept glancing over at it and almost shuddering at its sheer ugliness.  Maddie said "fine, this is your fault, you don't have Christmas spirit and now we have a sad tree."

Geesh!  The pressure!

I tried, let me tell you, on the Christmas spirit front.  I bought stuff to make a gingerbread house, I strung popcorn and cranberries and Charlie and I rolled out gingerbread and sang christmas carols -- we were a commercial I'm telling you.

But what a disaster!  I don't know what went wrong, but the house kept collapsing, I was covered from head to toe in the "glue," which is a sticky concoction of egg whites and confectioner sugar that didn't seem to be hardening on the house, but it had no problem doing so in my hair, and no matter what we did, it wouldn't stay up.

Finally, as we desperately tried to apply gumdrops and other pieces of candy to the sinking house, we decided that it was a "disaster house," and had been hit by a vicious snowstorm and killed all the occupants.  (Which was kind of the truth, because we had little mini gingerbread people all around who had been crushed by the walls of the structure.)  And!  Charlie was fine with that.  He even laughed.

Phew.

When I came home from the most fabulous of fabulous hikes in the woods with the new fallen powdery snow, I found Charlie rehabbing the poor little house with a glue gun.  It doesn't look half bad, and the kid loves the glue gun.  I know he had more fun putting the pieces together with that then he did with the sticky other "glue," that was torturous and messy and didn't work to boot.

I glanced at the tree and realized that a little glue gun magic needed to take place in this arena as well.  Now of course I didn't use glue, but with a little rearranging of furniture, a strategically placed poinsettia and rocking chair, our little tree with its numerous flaws has been transformed into a beauty.  It also looks bigger surrounded by things, so it's all good.

Really good.

And I am off to New York City tomorrow in a supposed snowstorm.  But nope.  It will be fine.  

But I'm taking the glue gun just in case!