holiday ornament display structure

Buying Christmas trees out here was a real shock for me, coming from Maine where you either got your tree at a high school friend's family's tree farm - cut your own for $25 - or you go out back behind your house - cut your own for $0.  Here in the high desert there aren't any tree farms so the trees are trucked in from Montana: they're tinder-dry and way expensive (I think we paid $50 for last year's tree which started dropping needles the minute we got it home).

Several weeks ago, as we were riding a chair lift at Alta, I offhandedly mentioned to H that I didn't think I was going to get a Christmas tree this year.  I'd previously been angling for a fake tree as it seems that more people out here have those than annual real ones but H has been adamantly opposed to that idea.  He doesn't really get into the holiday but he knows that I kind of like it and have a bunch of decorations and ornaments, so on the next chair ride he asked, "What if I make you one?"  What he had in mind was a folk art-y wooden tree, with offset dowel branches, very Charlie Brown Christmas-y.  I was intrigued and said, yes please!

The naked tree

So he designed and built me a Christmas tree (or, more technically, a Holiday Ornament Display Structure) for about $25, painted it and made himself dizzy winding lights around it.  It's tall and thin and tree-shaped; it's super-easy to decorate since you don't have to fuss around with needles and bending branches - I hung it with ornaments in about fifteen minutes.  I just love it.  It's goofy-looking but you can see each of the ornaments, there's no needle drop and the dog is not scared of it.  And when the holiday is over and it's time to put Christmas stuff away, I can take the ornaments off, throw a sheet over it and stick it in a basement closet until next year, easy as pie.

Fifteen minutes later ... decorated!