and I have never had a Christmas tree here in Boston..  Our last place was way too small, and beyond that, we leave for the last two weeks of December each year, so we not only aren’t around to enjoy it, but also aren’t around to take care of a real tree.   But since we purchased our new house and have some more elbow room, we decided to get a fake tree to get a little pre-game Christmas cheer going on… 

I’m not a huge fan of fake trees, in fact, I protested for years when my family switched to fake trees until they switched back…  But buying a real tree for our house and having to take it down and dispose of it BEFORE we leave for our Christmas holiday..  Well that is just crazy…

So we began looking for a good fake tree, which turned out to be much more difficult than I had imagined..  We went to Sears to learn that all their trees were pre-lit except for one, and any of the trees that looked remotely real were $200+.  We then swung over to Target, and they too only had pre-lit trees, which was frustrating.  I’m interested in using some of the new LED lights on our tree, since they use much less power than traditional lights and I suspect they are far more durable than the notoriously awful mini-lights…   But if the tree comes pre-lit, I would have to dispose of those lights, not to mention I suspect I’m paying premium price for the lights on the pre-lit tree..  So I retreated to the Internet…

I found lots of options online for non-lit trees, and settled on a model from Christmas Trees Galore.  Obviously I didn’t see the tree in person, so I can only hope it looks good once it’s been delivered and we set it up, but it was $100 less than many of the trees we were looking at and I’m not paying some factory worker to put lights on my tree…