I only had one tabletop Christmas tree before, and here's one of the pictures that I found...

I got it from Cost Plus years and years ago. It was an early evening and I wandered into the store to look at all the excitement being offered out there in the world. I remember walking around and thinking what a huge production it would be to actually buy a huge christmas tree and all that ornaments, but how much fun would that be?  When I saw the little miniature tree my heart jumped, it was so expensive back in the day that even now I still remember it, $48!! Before tax!! That was a lot of food and gas money for a college student like me. Gas was $20 for a tank, and 5 bucks bought me lunch... my head quickly raced for the numbers. But, I was working, and I justified the cost with two hours of teaching piano lessons.  So with my heart pumping I took the little tree home, out of my ugly and bare home where I did not have a single piece of furniture called my own except a table lamp, I proudly placed this little tree on my desk.  

I know I shouldn't be so materialist about things but it was a piece of festivity that had something to do with me.  The little tree with the tiny lights accompanied me through many nights of toiling through homework assignments, many hours of teaching, and on particular cold and exhausting nights through practicing to prepare for lessons and recitals.  It also was there when I enjoyed a warm cup of tea with some cookies and a good movie, it just plain made me happy. 

Since I didn't see any reason why my pretty tree had to be taken out of sight when Christmas was over, I kept it lit until well after the holiday. In fact, it was on all year round and I did not think anything of it. Once in a while I would hear comments from parents like, "I had a grandma that used to keep her Christmas tree out all year long," and I didn't think much of that either. Finally the tree light gave out and the tree got tucked into a corner of the room collecting dust.  Somehow, without the lights, the tree just lost all it's magic power.  Eventually my tree got placed on the curb and got picked up by somebody else.  

For the last couple of night, maybe all this holiday decorating has brought back memories, I kept thinking about my tree and wishing that I could have it back.  It would be so neat to have a miniature tree twinkling with lights sitting on my desk again!

Today just so happened that I was in Michael's to shop for ornaments for my wreath and garlands.  I had decided to buy a real Christmas tree this year, but I still walked through the Christmas tree section. There were many carefully packaged 4-6 feet tall trees neatly stacked on the shelves, and after circling the aisle a couple of times, I noticed a few dozen 2 ft tall white fuzzy sticks, very unceremoniously thrown on one section on the floor without any package.  I pulled one out to see what they were, turned out, these were white miniature Christmas trees, WITH LIGHTS!!!  This was a plain tree that needed to be fluffed out and decorated, which was just perfect for me.  Now you have to give credit to where credit is due, Michael's had a section of miniature Christmas tree decorations, complete with miniature tree top, ornaments, tree skirt, etc., etc.  

I picked out a snowman tree skirt, some vintage looking glass ornament sets and a silver colored star miniature tree topper! I felt like a little kid in a candy store, and I had a blast decorating it as soon as I got home.  I think my new tree has all the wonderful holiday cheer as the one I remembered and then some!  Hopefully the lights on this one will hold up for me to enjoy it for years to come!