Current mood:

exhausted

Don't start with me
The ultimate tree stand is no longer (notice the lower case). It leaked some water out the side of the resevoir, which is especially no good for our hardwood floors. And at $50 for the stand, I think it shouldn't leak. I also think the Swivel Straight system is badly designed, since you'll always have a slight water drip when you refill the water jug, plus the water that comes out of ours. However, we really liked the foot pedal to straighten the tree once it was in the stand. Anyway, we're taking it back to Cdn Tire.

In the mean time, we got a new stand that is way, way better. It's a simple, but very sturdy, steel stand that seems to work great and it's also easy to set up and has no leaks. I forget the name of the stand, but it had Santa's name in there, so how could we go wrong?

Who would have guessed that getting a real tree takes so much effort. It took two tree stands and two tree set-ups (we are now pros at putting up a tree), three trips to Cdn Tire to buy tree stands (one to get the swivel straight, one to get the new stand, and one to return the swivel straight). And the trip to buy the tree was equally event-filled. Last weekend we went to IKEA to check out their $15 trees, there were none to be seen. Then on Friday we went to the grocery super-store to get a tree (and to beat the weekend rush). The florist person who was selling the trees told us that the more expensive fir trees would last the longest (we were concerned since our apartment is normally quite dry) and that most likely all their trees would be gone by the end of the weekend. So, we decided to get a $60 7-8 foot fir tree (even though we could have gotten a lesser balsam at $30). [Putting that tree in the trunk/back seat of the car was another adventure - I thought it was going to fall out on to the street the whole way home.] Boy are we glad we got the fir. It is a beautiful tree, it's branches are very even, and it smells so nice. The tree is now up and all decorated (including 4 strands of white lcd lights - that's another story of 5 hours of shopping for these in three different cities) and it looks very nice.

I think we learned a lot from this experience. And one is that throwing money at buying the "best" tree stand didn't work. Another is that you should allocate an entire weekend to get and put up a tree.