Back to 2021 – Ahead to 2023 (coming soon)

Grand total for this year is, up for a bit of debate. We added some mini trees this year and some people feel they don’t count and some people feel they do. If you want to include the mini trees: 48, 47 at home and 1 at work. If you want to exclude the mini trees, then 36, 35 at home and 1 at work.   

Let’s start out with a few overview photos. Upstairs overview:

Upstairs from the other angle:

Downstairs in the family room:

Downstairs at night (which is a very neat effect):

Dining room photos:

The Line-Up (all the trees close up)

Did my best to capture all the trees (lit and unlit) in closeup.

Two little brown trees (#1 and #2) – they have a collection of Santas and all of Santa’s reindeer

Candy cane tree (#3). Very special return of the wooden nativity. We got one in Poland in 2018 that was subsequently chewed up by Finn in 2019. Finn found a new one online and bought it for me for Christmas this year.

Red tree with gold ornaments (#4).

Penguin Tree (#5).

Rainbow tree (#6). This set of images shows off the fact that the topper projects onto the ceiling above the tree as well.

Blue spruce with teal and purple lights (#7). This is the first tree we ever bought (after Christmas sale). It originally had all clear lights, but my dad painstakingly changed out bulbs so that they are purple, teal, white, and opaque white. It has coordinating ornaments (blue, teal, purple), but also black or white. In recent years, the white seems to dominate, but if you look near the top right of the tree, you can find the Santa in blue and purple holding animals that actually inspired the tree.

White with blue lights and blue ornaments (#8). This one rotates with another so it’s only out every other year. My fervent wish when I was younger was to have white trees with different colors of lights that would glow that color. If you look at the pictures of the living room at night, you get a true sense of the effect.

Tree #9 is the mini Wizard of Oz, #10 is the Twelve Days of Christmas tree (finally finished with all 12 ornaments this year), #11 is another mini ornament tree.

Hiding underneath is #12 – lime green with icons of the 80s.

Little Sesame Street Tree (#13), Turquoise Snow tree (#14), Bills tree (#15), Blue tree with ornaments that remind me of our son and/or were bought for him (#16).

Number 17 is our first tree. We received it the first year we were married (now 20 years ago) from my husband’s aunt. It is still one of my favorites because of the ornaments that we put on it – Disney and lots of other memories of me as a kid and our kids. Two views of this one because of the sheer number of ornaments. First the “left” side.

And now the “right” side.

Pastel Rainbow Tree (#18).

Small purple tree with hot pink and purple ornaments (#19) and small white winter tree with winter friends (#20). These are new this year.

Beauty & the Beast Tree (#21).

Gold tree with animal ornaments, also known as off-red and off-green (#22), which are ornaments that have red and green, but not the bright red and green that go on the red and green tree. Turns out that many of the animal ones have this quality, so it has morphed. This tree has the first ornament what you may call the start of my collection. A golden retriever puppy with a candy cane (about mid-way down in the center). I always say that is the one that started it all, even though there are ornaments in the collection older than that. It is hanging out in the office and is a backdrop for my husband’s meetings. This one was not out last year, so it is exciting to be able to have it out again.

Traveling upstairs, we can see #23 (purple with silver), #24 (Mickey ornament display tree), and #25 (pink with gold) from our bedroom.

Out on the landing, we will start with the trees that get obscured by others. First up, the white with red and green ornaments (#26).

Black tree with silver ornaments (#27). [Forgot to get a lit version before it was covered up, but you can see it lit in the overview photos.]

Purple tree (#28). This was the first non-traditionally colored tree I bought.

Pink tree with pink lights and pink ornaments (#29).

Lilac tree (#30). This tree is basically two-sided so the side-by-side shows the purple ornament side of the tree and the lime green ornament side of the tree instead of the typical lit/unlit.

Small royal blue with ornaments that are favorite childhood toys and games (#31).

This is small black to silver Ombre tree (#32) with what seems to only be Barbie ornaments, but the truth is that the tree started out for ornaments that have bright yellow, hot pink, orange, etc. Colors that didn’t fit well with the other trees. Many of the Barbies fit that criteria, but you’ll see Barbie ornaments on almost all the trees.

Little pink tree with purple ornaments (#33).

Silver “aluminum” tree, lit by a color wheel with rainbow ornaments (#34). That is, ornaments that basically are literal rainbows, or Rainbow Brite or Care Bears.

Wizard of Oz tree (#35). Very excited this year that we got a new tree topper and tree skirt. Luna ate the original Glenda tree topper (see 2020) and I could not replace it exactly, but this one is a reasonable fit.

We can end with the last sets of mini trees that are new this year, but contentious. Some have argued to me that it is cheating to add mini trees to increase my count. I didn’t do it to increase my count, I really liked the idea of these mini trees in the bold rainbow colors (#36 through #41) and pastel rainbow colors (#42 through #47) because it compliments their larger counterparts. I have a smattering of ornaments on these trees that coordinate the colors. You can decide for yourself if they count or not.

There was number #48 in the office – the black Star Wars tree, but I somehow forgot to take a photo of it before I packed it up to bring home over break. I will substitute last year’s photo, because while I never get the ornaments in the same place, and I’m not even in the same office this year, it’s the basic idea of that tree.