Although our house can not be considered small by any means (2,200 square feet), the living room is pretty packed with a sofa, two chairs and the TV. There is no room for a Christmas tree. Ditto for the dining room. So this year, when I saw a tree advertised as a “pencil design,” I saw it as an answer to our Christmas tree dilemma.

You see, husband has been a scrooge for several years now, not really caring whether we even had a tree, real or fake. I think the tipping point for him was the year daughter chose a 10-foot-tall real tree (photo below) at a local tree lot. Yes, we had the space for it in our house at the time. And we lived the smell of a real tree. But we didn’t really realize the undertaking such a big tree meant. From getting it home to getting it set up in the house to actually decorating it. It was a huge job. And really, Christmas trees shouldn’t be looked upon as work.In the years that followed, our Christmas tree got smaller. One year, after an argument over where to set up the tree, we almost didn’t get one. Thankfully, daughter told us to get our priorities straight. After all, we had to have a tree or it just wouldn’t be Christmas. (She was right, of course.)

So, like I said earlier, the pencil tree seemed like the perfect answer to our tree problem. It might be 7 feet tall, but at less than 2 feet wide at its widest, it fits perfectly in the hallway that opens to our dining room. It’s fake so there are no worries about watering it or needles falling all over the floor. It’s pre-lit, so we didn’t have to unsnarl any of last year’s lights to hang on it.
It required absolutely zero help from husband, so that makes it perfect for him. Best of all, the tree is really cute in a Charlie-Brown-meets-Toy-Story-sort-of-way. Yes, we realize the angel on top is kind of big, but we don’t care. It’s our angel and we love it.

It fits perfectly. Just like it was meant to be.