i kind of hate my fake xmas tree

Last year after Christmas I bought a fake tree at Target. It was 75% off and I rationalized it was a good deal and would be easier than a real tree.

And now I hate it. You kind of get what you pay for. And I paid for a craptastic tree.

Granted, it doesn't look that bad in this photo, but it's just a blah tree. Next year I think we'll ditch it and go back to the real one. On a sidenote, holy cow, my flash is bright. You can't even see that the lights are on. The tree has ornaments from the husband's childhood as well as mine, and now our time together. I like old ornaments - I like unpacking them and going through them every year.This is our TV cabinet - I got the faux mercury glass trees at Target last year. I love them. This is the mantle that faces the hearth area. I took a fat faux garland, put a silver leaf magnolia garland over it, and filled it with some feathers and rustic looking picks from Michael's. It does look nice in person, but in this photo it's kind of drab! I put Christmas cards on top of it as they come in.

Also on the mantle I have my Ball jars and some clear vases with some winter bulbs.This is one of the wreaths outside. The blue is turquoise in person. The super duper flash of my camera washes things out! This is my horrendous photo of the outside of our house - we used big lights around the porch and on the fence on both sides and red mini lights on the boxwood bushes.
This is the fence on one side - I like the big lights. When we bought our house, we didn't really think about Christmas light placement. We only have bit trees in the front of the house, so we can't really decorate them aside from maybe wrapping lights around the trunk of the tree. I think we might have to plant a small pine tree or something to decorate - is that crazy?! Probably. Oh well!