Some of the guys breaking down & cleaning out the flocking machine, as well as the flocking tent

Seriously, this is our own personal snowman, made out of flocking material, we should have done this sooner! He can be our official greeter...

LOOK! It "snowed" on our lot! It left a snowman!

Friday, December 19

The days are winding down to the end of our stint here in Walnut Creek. This weekend will be the last chance for people wanting to get a tree for Christmas. I've been taking it easy, not working, because there hasn't been that much happening on the lot to require both of us out there. Ron has been braving the cold temperatures and I have been either doing things in the rig or shopping or doing laundry. Today was particularly slow, I guess, because the guys decided to do some playing in the "snow", as you will see. On Monday, we'll start tearing down our lot, until by Tuesday afternoon, we should be ready to clear out of here on Christmas Day. We'd like to take this time to wish all of our Boomer friends, stick house friends and family a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

This week is a break of sorts, because it's not as busy as on the weekends. Guess we'll be getting our last load of trees on Wednesday. Believe it or not, we are all out of garland and most of our wreaths. We just have the 24 inch ones left, as well as 4 candy cane wreaths. We'll probably sell out of those in the coming days. And even though it has been really cold, we are still having fun interacting with the customers and our crew of young men, I'll almost be sorry to see it all end....

Our great crew of guys who helped with our weekend sales

Here's one of our lot workers getting creative with the flocking machine, we have two excellent flockers on our lot

Ron sold a whopping 34 trees today...

Today, Monday, I got a bit of a break. First off, I went to the laundry to do our two weeks worth of clothes. Then, when I got back, Ron told me I could take the rest of the day off to "rest". So, I decided to update the BLOG. Here's a picture of Ron doing my job...

We sold 172 trees on Saturday and 180 trees on Sunday, now, that is a LOT OF TREES!!! We had a good time both days even if it was frigid outside.

Ron and part of his crew, goofing around

Here I am in the booth, waiting to take the customers money...HEY, it was cold out there!!! (notice the heater)

Mounting it on the customers car and tying it down

Pulling it through to the other side

Starting to put the tree through the netter

After a customer selects their tree, we give it a fresh cut

Customers looking for trees while a lot worker unwraps another tree to put out

This is what we were greeted with when we woke up Saturday morning, fog

This past weekend was really busy. Since the tree season is so short this year, we really only have two really busy weekends, this past one and next weekend. The following pictures are of life on a tree lot during the rush...

Another view of the wreaths

Our display of garland and our different sizes of wreaths

On our Christmas tree lot, we offer refreshments for our customers. During the weekdays, I offer coffee and hot water, with tea bags and packets of apple cider and hot chocolate. We also have cookies and soft mints. On the weekends, I mix the chocolate mix into the hot water in the urn, which makes it really good. The regular cider gets mixed with spiced cider and it goes into its own urn. Of course, we also have coffee. The customers are always appreciative of the offerings.

A view of our decorated booth with the refreshment table in front

If you click on the picture, you'll see our heater that we use to dry the flocked trees

Our display table with some of the wreaths and more flocked trees

The flocked trees in our tent ready for sale.

The day after Thanksgiving was our opening day and we were BUSY!! We ended up selling 103 trees that day, boy were we tired that night.

We took a break from the trees and had a nice Thanksgiving feast with the other lot managers. It was a potluck and I really thought we'd be cooking the turkey, since I have the big oven, but, one of the other women volunteered to cook it. We found out when we got over there that the church where their lot is set up at, let her use the kitchen to cook the turkey and we also got to sit in the fellowship hall to eat our dinner. It sure was nice being in a warm room instead of a cold tent. I know I took pictures, but, can't figure out what happened to them.

This is a picture of all the wreaths and garland we got with the trees

This is looking at the start of our forest in front

Starting to fill the lot with trees

Stacking up the trees to put out on the lot

Our Silver Tip table toppers

Another view of our trees

Our entire load of trees, over 600 of them!

A few trees have been off loaded, we're separating them by height

Everyone lending a hand to get the trees out

Where the trees are going to be

Here is our crew waiting for the truck full of trees to arrive

Looking at the flocking tent

That last picture is out of sequence, since as you can see, there are trees in the background, but, oh well...at least you can see the striping we did

We have striped the poles

Another view

Our lot before we striped the posts

Putting up the tent

Hi everyone, sorry it's taken me so long to get back to posting pictures. We were gone for a few days and when we got back, we really had no time to do anything. We got our first trees delivered on the Friday and Saturday before Thanksgiving. I finally got those pictures ready to view.