One of the things that we love about Christmas is to be able to choose our tree and then decorate it. Since I was little I have been used to plastic trees. It is not typical to get real trees when you live in Peru and around Christmas the weather is hot! My mum always bought a nice big tree to use for a few years. This was always done on the last Sunday of November. This is something that I have always had in my head so I try to do the same here. However, one of the things that we have done differently for the past 3 years is to have a real Christmas Tree. Living in London, this is something that is more accessible to do.
Since the first time we had a real Christmas Tree we have not gone back to using a plastic one. There is something about a real Christmas Tree that makes Christmas even better! We now love this and will do it forever! The whole idea of going to your nearby popup tree store and choosing a tree with our daughters is a lovely experience.
Last year we ended up browsing around a Pines & Needles pop up shop in North London which is when we fell in love with their trees. We bought a real tree from them and we absolutely loved it. This year I was so excited when they contacted me to invite us to an event in Wimbledon. It was held at their main site in Wimbledon Park. They have a lot of space there so you can go around to see all the trees on display. It is great because the kids can run around which is fine as it is big enough for them to do that.
The idea of this event was to go there, pick out our Christmas Tree and then have it delivered to our home. I thought this was a fantastic idea so I immediately said yes. We all went to the event although I was worried it was going to be a little bit late for Sienna, but the idea of all of us choosing our tree was something so appealing that you don’t do every day.
When we arrived we were all mesmerised by the amount of beautiful Christmas Trees that they had. They were all gorgeous. There was also some food and drinks like mince pies, sandwiches, juices and prosecco. We also were able to listen to the carol singers from Opera Holland Park. They were really good. My girls loved the carols, especially Sienna.
They also had lots of Christmas decorations and mini trees. They were so nice as they gave us two mini trees for the girls to take home together with a small box of baubles each too. The girls were very happy about this.
We then decided to go around and explore the trees. We knew what we were after as we wanted the same tree as we had last year, so we knew what size and style was perfect for us. This was the The Norman Fir which they had plenty of. We wanted a 4ft one, so we were after that. We love this type of tree because of its Non-Drop pine needles. It is fantastic!
If you read my post from last year you will see how amazed we were at finding out that the needles which dropped were minimal and our tree lasted a lot. We were obviously very happy and eager to find the same tree.
We were lucky to have a chat with one of the brothers who setup and own the company. It was really nice to hear all about this lovely company and their story. He told us the first pop-up store they had was actually in Maida Vale (NW London) which is quite local to us. I have seen those trees before so many times but I never realised it was their store.
THE STORY BEHIND PINE AND NEEDLES
Just so you know a little bit more about Pines and Needles, it was founded by brothers Josh and Sam Lyle back in 1995. It all started when the youngsters (then aged 15 and 13) came up with the brainwave of loading an old horsebox with Christmas trees from their family farm in Scotland and taking the long journey down to London. After a few years, the kilted crew grew in size, the Internet beckoned, and the rest, as they say, is history.
They have the amazing service of delivering to your door, installing and also decorating. We didn’t have this service offered but were offered the delivery service which was fantastic. We found the tree we wanted and so we arranged the date for the delivery and gave them our details.
AT HOME
After a lovely evening, we then headed back home as our little monsters were getting super tired.
We arranged for our tree to be delivered a week after as I was going to be away in Paris for the E-Fluent Spot 5 event so that way I was going to be around when it was delivered. The day it came, it was super early which was great as Nick was still around before work. They also sent us a base for the tree.
Nick put the tree on the base and we got Bella to put the star on the top of the tree. It was lovely to see the tree there. We still needed to get all the decorations out to get our Christmas Tree ready! Yay!
It was all done in an afternoon. We had so much fun doing it and the tree looked fantastic! What do you think? Do you agree? I hope so, LOL!
Because the tree is real you need to water it regularly for it to last longer. We are doing this and we are so happy as it still looks great. We are now really looking forward to Christmas! If you would like to buy a real Christmas Tree, you can order from them online or you could check the list of their pop-up stores HERE.
We made a little video about the event which also includes us decorating the tree at the end. I hope that you like it! You can watch it below:
Have you had a real tree before? Have you had it delivered to your home? Have you heard of Pines & Needles before? Please leave a comment below as I would love to read what you think.
Thanks for stopping by,
Love you all ❤️
Franca 💋
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