never again

most years my work gets a live tree for the kids to decorate during their last few weeks of kinder. after the year is done one of the staff usually takes it home. nobody else in our room wanted our tree and i did so i ended up taking it home. zac was very against this mostly because it involved him getting the work car to help me transport it home (2 years ago a few of us walked the tree and some giant pot plants 250m up the road to a workmate that lived that close to kinder. the car is a much better option, especially cuz its 1500m to our house). a few days after getting the tree home (and yes, it is leaning to the left because whoever put it in the base for us put it in crooked and i couldn't be bothered to fix it at work or at home) i noticed a spider web from the star to branches near the top. when i had a closer look i found hundreds of little baby spiders crawling up and down the line. i took the star outside with a lot of spiders on it and then sprayed the top of the tree with soapy water and a mix of water and eucalyptus oil (not very vegan of me). there's a lot less spiders now but i'm sure the first time we turn on the central heating in winter dozens of spiders are going to shoot out of the vent next to the tree.
i also had issues with the lites. i have 2 sets that i use on our tree. a couple days after i put up this live tree (and took down the fake one i already had up) one of the 2 lite sets blew up so only half the tree was lit. i managed to find a new set of just plain yellow toned fairy lites after looking in kmart and a few $2 shops. i took apart the tree (the second time i've taken apart a tree at this point) to get the new lite set on. i carefully put all my delicate ornaments along the wall near the tree. as i was taking the other ornaments off a little wooden duck ornament fell and landed directly on my favourite ornament (a large ball painted with maple leafs and "canada" written on it-- my mom gave it to me the year she was here for christmas)and smashed the back out of it. i've managed to tape the 5 pieces back on but they don't fit nicely in the hole and i'm scared that if i push to hard i'll completely smash it. my mom spent yesterday trying to find me a new one in the tourist-y shops (she can't remember which one she got it at).
next year i'm going to stick to my fake tree which is less likely to have baby insects living on it, and won't require me to re-decorate multiple times and i'll have less chance of breaking special ornaments (but i won't have that nice pine smell in the house).