Candy, Christmas Trees and Training Torture Part TWO

Part Two

After the christmas trees comes candy!

So, having trained hard and celebrated with a lot of cake and a moderate amount of wine, this week was fast becoming a success on all fronts. What could top the hard work and birthday excitement, after all? Nothing. But christmas trees and the most amount of sweets I have ever seen in anyone's house certainly added to the brilliance that was this week.

What shall I tell you first? Let's leave the edibles till last, shall we? I will give you a teaser picture to whet your appetite, though.

Yesterday (saturday) I finally got myself in gear to get my christmas tree up and decorated. For most people this means heaving down the boxes and huffing off the dust, followed by half an hour of struggling to unbend recalcitrant branches and connect slightly wonky tubes. Then you discover the whole thing is leaning drunkenly backwards so you are forced to dive among the branches again to attempt to beat it into an upright stance. Anyway, my family have always liked to buy real pine christmas trees. This despite the fact that we all come up in horrible itchy rashes and sometimes even start wheezing when forced to touch them for any length of time (i.e. over 10 seconds). But nothing really comes close to that rich pine scented christmas smell that your house takes on for the next month and choosing exactly the right tree is a joy in itself.

Roundstone Farm

So yesterday we excitedly sorted into teams (my mum and eldest sister Renate, verses Kariss and me), jumped into two cars and split the destinations between us for optimum christmas tree scoping. The first place we (Kariss and I) tried was Roundstone Farm, partly because I love the atmosphere and friendliness of the staff. 

Unfortunately, although they had plenty of non-drop Scottish Nordmans my mum and sister insist that the Norway Spruces are the best for shape and smell, despite the fact that they drop buckets of pine needles all over your floor and, unluckily, Roundstone only had one sad specimen left. 

W&F Garden Centre

Onwards to Ferring and Worthing Garden Centre where despite the beautiful old traction engine outside and some slightly scary animated polar bears in their christmas department, the selection of trees was uninspiring and expensive. However they did have some lovely (albeit massive) wicker reindeer and the entire selection is professionally displayed in their outdoor covered areas. 
They also have a collection of potted christmas trees if you don't want your tree to die for the holiday; you will have to fork out quite a lot for a potted tree however, and they are very small, even the so-called 'large' ones.

Potted christmas trees at Worthing and Ferring Garden Centre

Next we travelled to Lansdowne Nurseries and found a lovely, family run business with a field full of chickens and every member of the family either helping you choose your tree, pay for your tree or even, in the case of the young teenage girl, re-wrapping your tree in netting. I was tired just lifting our tree in and out of the car - she must have been exhausted! Anyway, we thought we had found a winner and after rendezvousing with my sister and mum and following a disappointing tour around Hobbycraft's new store next to Haskins (anyone else think it is overpriced and doesn't have enough of any one craft?), we all returned to choose our trees.

Lansdowne Nursery

A lot of faffing around later and we had four trees - one large Spruce for my parents house, two medium Spruces, one each for my sister's home and my dad's business and one smallish Scottish non-drop for Kariss and me. You see, we decided that they looked just as good, were less messy and less likely to bring me out in a rash after carrying or decorating it and the pine needles are not so deathly sharp. We have also planned to save space and money by buying a smallish (5ft!) tree and mounting it on our coffee table -will let you know if it works out!
And, as if to prove my point about family run businesses, the gentleman on the till gave us a dozen eggs for free, so fresh that they were still warm and very much in need of a good scrub.

After all that heavy lifting (any excuse for some Tough Mudder training), we were in need of some tea and a treat so we popped in on my brother and sister-in-law's house. Recently, my brother set up an online business selling imported American candy, iCandyStore; he seemed to be selling a steady amount and there are always a large amount of boxes in their house. However, when I visited this week the entire kitchen has been taken over by a wall of candy, the shed is full of cans and christmas hampers and boxes are stacked precariously everywhere.

The photos really do not do it justice: there is just SO MUCH CANDY! Boxes of Reeces Cups, Fizz Wizz and Pop Tarts jostle with brands I've never heard of like Flips, Mike&Ike, Tootsie Rolls and 3 Musketeers bars. We had to take advantage of this and quickly got stuck into a healthy afternoon snack of cinnamon Pop Tarts, jelly snakes and Reeces Crispy Crunchy bar (see Kariss' satisfied face, left, for a review of the latter), washed down with a cup of tea. 

The only problem with there being so much candy and chocolate (apart from getting hugely, happily fat) is: who is going to help them with the christmas orders?

Run away, run away, fast! Wait, grab me a packet of popping candy on your way out, will you?