It all started with us buying a super fancy artificial Christmas tree in Australia and shipping it to our place in NZ in September. Actual fir trees are close to impossible to get here and even if, they have hanging tips of new season growth within hours and just look sad. Artificial trees mostly look just sad, but we found one that looks stunningly real and close enough to an actual European style fir tree. We were sitting on needles to finally see it fully set up on December 1st.