Me on a festive Monday

It's been an escaping santa, Christmas jumper wearing, ladies what do lunch, pizza gorging, kiddy entertaining, last minute shopping and wrapping, cheeky sneak previews from the Baby, Christmas tunes blaring, tree abusing (toddlers and trees don't mix!), fast food craving, recieving a letter from the big man himself, a hairy night with lots of little one coughing, a blissful lie in till 9,30 and editing pics in bed kind of a Monday.

Thanks Sian for keeping my blog going with this meme!

All about the tree

Finally getting a chance to join in with Sian's Christmas club. Every week I have racked my brains for a story I haven't yet shared and then always change my mind as I don't have a corresponding picture or I've left it too late. So here it is...

So Christmas 2010 was a pretty memorable one. In many ways it was quite a quiet one as my youngest sister and her husband were working out in the paradise that is Turks and Caicos and my older sister decided Christmas on the beach was a better option.

When we arrived at my parents house we were disappointed, but not surprised, that they didn't have a tree yet. We're a real tree family and so we set off to the tree farms to find the perfect specimen.

This was also the year of the white Christmas and this smattering of white stuff makes everything instantly more magical. 

There seemed to be a shortage of trees a few days before Christmas and so we ended up in Homebase where they had two measly specimens left. See below...

Certainly not the best spread of branches and a bit bare at the top. This is when I hit on the idea of asking for a discount. 

Now my dad is Irish and like the Scottish and the Yorkshire folk they are very careful with their money (read: tight) whenever we've been shopping and dad asks the price we always halve it and he'll still comment, "that's expensive!" We knew for his sake we had to get a discount.

My mom, however, is the opposite and loves the luxurious things in life. Her idea of a sale if the Harrods sale where everything is 20% off and still barely affordable! So I dared her to ask for a discount.

The pimply sales assistant was clearly not used to such bolshy customers and so he had to call the supervisor and we wee beginning to lose our nerve by the time he turned up. 

However she used her South African charms and logic in pointing out that it was one of the only ones left and the big day was almost upon us. He ended up taking a tenner off for us and so we found dad in the bargain corner to tell him our exciting news.

His response? "£18 for a tree? That's expensive!"

No pleasing some Irish men.