hello i'm wander001 and i bring you a review a year in a making this is the balsam hill classic
blue spruce tree now when you think of classic trees you're probably thinking of the things
that you grew up with if you're around my age so this is not balsam's hill's most realistic
looking Christmas tree however this is their most traditional looking Christmas tree so you're
not getting the realism but you are getting that traditional look now part of the reason
that my wife and i ended up going with this one is because if you look around in the stores nowadays
there are a lot of skinny bottom trees they don't look quite as full so we wanted to have
something kind of like with a fuller base but i'm getting ahead of myself let's go back to last year
when i purchased this tree and see what we got in the box all right so here we're starting off with
how the box looks obviously we open it up because well there's lots of sensitive information on the
outside so this particular one is the balsam hill classic blue spruce so ideally packaging should be
similar for all the other ones except if it's a larger tree which should have several boxes
this was only a six and a half foot tree so it all fit in one box opened up on the top there
you've got like a little welcome a little welcome message over here on the side you've got tape down
assembly gloves a lot of people when they're putting this thing together you know if you
got the ultra real ones the the needles would hurt uh this is kind of your classic traditional tree
fake tree so i don't suspect they'll hurt all too much but let's take a look here at the top
thank you for your purchase i'm assuming there is some instructions in there
we'll look at that later we're just gonna
take that top portion off there and you can see
how nicely it is packaged so this is even indicating section two so we're just gonna pull
section two out so we can see what else we have in here this is an unlit tree so there are going to
be no extra bulbs uh however this does look like it is a case so you don't have to keep the box
and then here are the other sections which are tied off quite nicely with the
little ribbon here awesome hill so presentation they get a plus for that you can see each of
the ends is also bubble wrapped so that's kind of how things looked in the box when we first got it
all right so the paperwork that was in that little red packet is kind of a
quick setup guide and a warranty as well as like a thank you there's a multi-folded
here to troubleshoot just about anything that may be wrong uh instructions how to fluff the
tree and then all the way at the bottom is the tree stand the sections i laid out over there
so even if the numbers are no longer on there section one is the largest so with the way at
the left section two is the middle there and then section three is the smallest at the top all of
them except for the top does have that balsam hill string wrapping to keep things in order so
that's what you're looking at right out of the box unfortunately benefit of the balsam hill
tote that comes with it are the handles are actually cushioned so dragging this up the
stairs or down from your attic not as difficult as uh some other ones and a little more comfortable
all right first parts of the setup is getting the included tree stand all situated then you
have your labeled sections as you saw in the box before so we're just going to take
the cap off of section one here that's to protect the bag obviously from getting poked
and then we're just gonna drop it right into the tree stand tighten section one into place
so the nice thing about the balsam hill tree is that you don't have to stick each individual
branch into the center section they all just kind of flop down after you take the ribbon off
so that's very nice and there is our Christmas cat already interested in the new tree
section two just slides into place there's nothing to screw down and there's Christmas cat number two
and then just like before if you undo
the uh ribbon and make sure you give yourself enough space and don't have family members around
who laugh at you when the Christmas tree hits you in the face uh that's section two the final
section is just wrapped in bubble wrap because it does not actually have a cap so you just kind of
take it bring it over to the top of the tree and insert it is hexed up there so you can kind of see
there's a hex guide and then there's the hex of this and you just kind of line that up and
it gets in there now these don't really flop down like the other sections so this one will require
much more fluffing than the lower parts of the tree so this is kind of what we're
looking at when it uh first comes out so a little little Charlie brownish looking right now but
hopefully some fluffing will fix that close-up of the actual branches themselves you can see when
you get really close there towards the stem they have these little brown colorations and then the
leaves themselves are two different colors one on top is dark green and then they lighter bluish
underneath and then you kind of see rather than just that the way that old trees were
they actually round them out so the ones that are on the far far ends are rounded
when you come in get some of the smaller ones they're just blunted off but the larger
more protruding ones are a little rounder and there's Christmas kitty hiding in the corner
so let's take in the entire Christmas tree top to bottom here and then we'll come in for some
closer shots now i will say if you notice if i come over here you can kind of see that there are
some gaps so not quite as depicted on a lot of the marking material for this i will say
it's probably due to fluffing if you look closely at the way that balsam hill pictures this tree
these end branches here are very much fluffed out into like an open palm to make it look a little
more full i'm not saying that i dislike the way that this looks and just keep in mind fluffing
to what you see here did take about an hour now next year when we try this we'll probably try and
follow the balsam hill directions exactly see if it looks a little fuller than what we have
here but in comparison to our little tree that we had i'm very happy with this some thoughts about
this setup in general this is the non-lit version and what i'm going to say is my wife and i when
we put this together we wanted to move it a little further away from that window which
our cats can get to and jump which is also why the hodgepodge because we have to have the cat
level about here on the tree to prevent them from getting the ornaments and breaking them
there are no locking mechanisms on the second section and the third section only the base has a
lock for the third section so when you try and move this if you grab the middle section and try
and use that to pick up you are actually going to separate the tree so keep that in mind place first
then do everything or else you will have the tree separate on you
and that is not a good thing so just to give you an idea uh i'll put a link to the star and
the actual lights that we use but we ended up using six strings of lights on here uh and you
can kind of see we probably should space that a little more at the bottom here but that's fine
coming down to the stand itself we don't have a tree skirt on here and we do have small cats and
for the most part they haven't really been able to knock this around at all which is really good
they've been under there they've been nibbling at the branches which they shouldn't be doing but
the tree has withstood them running around it so if you're worried about stability with small
children you might have a problem larger dogs maybe smaller cats regular sized cats i don't
think you'll have much of a problem so if you are in the market for something traditional in that
it is a Christmas tree very much like you had when you were younger and not super realistic i have
seen these super realistic balsam hill trees and they are nice but you definitely for the tips here
these are the more realistic looking things on the realistic trees and they're like plastic so
you actually will get pricked a lot more than with something like this when we fluff this we didn't
even have to wear the included gloves because well this is just soft which is very nice it's
kind of staying to the one side because i don't want to get into my light but so you can kind
of see right there you can kind of see through it a little bit again for me it doesn't bother me if
you are looking for something depicted exactly as it is on the balsam hill website you will
probably have to do a little better fluffing and again open palm fluffing for me it's a good tree
in comparison to a lot of things that you see in department stores and and the like so for me
waiting a year to put this up because i got it last year and then waited an entire year because
we got it at the end of the season because if you shop at balsam hill before the season starts or
right after the season ends you can generally pick these up whether it's this tree or any of their
other trees at a very reduced price so well worth looking into if you are considering something like
this and when i post this video if you're seeing it right when it posts there probably are going
to be sales and if you wait until the end right after Christmas there will definitely be sales
i have been wanderer001 if you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave them in the
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