Oh, Chrismy Tree

My day job has taken over! Agh! There is no excuse to abandon your projects, your fun and creative outlets... but I have done so for the past several days. I apologize, devoted readers! Two more days of work nightmarishness, and then Jensy gets a long-awaited, well-deserved break. In the meantime, last night Josh and I took a pause from all the pressure to do my favorite thing of the year. We bought and decorated our tree.

For those of you who know me personally and are wondering what a Jewish girl with a non-Christian Japanese boyfriend is doing buying a Christmas tree, sorry to disappoint, but I do nothing by the books. Growing up we always had Christmas trees and did the whole present thing, and rocked out to all the music, and I won't apologize for it. Josh is in, too. Such a relief!

My man carries the tree... <3 Sorry so blurry

My brothers and I started calling Christmas "Chrismy" in childhood. I feel like we stole it from the Muppet Special or some other strange Christmas-themed television program for kids. Whatever the reason, it stuck, and we love it. So there you have that.

Check out what $60 will do for you! Amazed.

Last year Josh picked up our tree at a Home Depot in Jersey, which was a pretty good choice since it was cheap and he had a car to transport it to the city. This year we had no such luck on the car, so we decided to go to a street vendor. We comparison shopped--the first guy seemed somewhat clueless and vaguely attitidunal. We walked up a couple of blocks to the guy outside the Food Emporium on 2nd and 51st. He seemed to know everything about Christmas trees--and even gave us the tip that we should put a crushed aspirin (NOT Tylenol or Advil) in room temp water for the tree to keep it alive and well through New Year's Day. He also negotiated a decent price on a great tree, and sent us home with a little piece of stump so we could figure out our tree's age, and a bunch of branches to use as decor in the apartment. Success!

Luckily Josh is stronger than I am; he toted the tree home over his shoulder like the hero that he is. And though he declined to indulge me with the Christmas tunes I requested, we had a blast decorating our cute tree. We nabbed this glittery star topper at Duane Reade last year and most of our basic ball ornaments were a steal at TJ Maxx last year as well. The Diet Coke ornament is my personal favorite--available on urbanoutfitters.com along with SO many other cute ones. And no New Yorker's tree would be complete without a Starbucks cup dangling somewhere. We have one already, but is it weird that I kind of want more?

As for the extra branches, I had fun arranging them in a gorgeous crystal vase and hanging a few ornaments from it. Makes for a sweet embellishment when you don't have the time or $$ to invest in a ton of Chrismy crap to put everywhere.

Sorry, all you staunch Jews out here, but I adore Chrismy and the warm and delicious feeling it gives me. So excited to post more words and photos of inspiration throughout my favorite season :)

xoxo Jensy is a happy girl today!