Getting In The Holiday Spirit

Today (Thursday 2009-12-17), I finished my holiday shopping and holiday shipping, and start my Christmas parties on Friday.  But what about the wrapping?  Hush, you!  :-)

I'm taking this little time out to show you my Christmas decorations.  This is the first year that I have had a tree.  I've been doing wreaths for years, but now I have enough room, so I bought an end of season, 80% off, pre-lit, Charlie Brown-esque tree, and went to decorating.  Just so you know, these pictures are carefully staged and cropped.  The condo is currently a toxic waste dump just off camera.

A number of years ago, I started giving out (and keeping) a different silver Christmas ornament each year as a package topper.  Just a little something to kick things up a notch.  So, my tree is filled with bright, shiny ornaments, the don't photograph worth a hoot.

This little Christmas tree from Crate & Barrel turned out looking nice, but you can hardly see last year's silver reindeer sitting right there.

Here is a full on shot of my tree.  See what I mean?  And I don't even have a proper tree topper, but Cora does, so I figure why go out and buy one now.

Yep, I had a pretty productive day off.  As I said, I finished my shopping, boxed, wrapped and mailed a couple of things out, got a hair cut, replaced the battery in my car, picked up the dry cleaning, etc.  Tomorrow is the company Christmas party, so I couldn't take tomorrow off.  And Saturday a good friend of mine is coming up from St. Louis and so friends from the suburbs are coming down into the city and we are going to have a nice dinner and hang out together for most of the day.  So, if I wanted to have a shot of not wrapping presents in Mom & Dad's basement on the 24th again, I needed to carve out the time somehow.

But now, on with the show…

So here's my fireplace, and you can see that my balls are hung…

I have some hand painted glass ball ornaments that I got at a craft show.  Long boring story short, my Mom & Dad had a booth at a  craft show in the Quad Cities one year after Thanksgiving.  The guy who made these had the next booth, and didn't sell a damn thing all day.  So, while not exactly a 'sympathy buy' I did buy 3 hand painted ornaments.  I bought the snowman…

the Christmas trees…

and the constipated sun.

And speaking of hand painted ornaments, (not constipation) this guy, "Party Boy" is a P. Buckley Moss design that I bought at her museum a few years back.  It is hand painted on the inside of the glass!

Getting back to the tree, I have a bit of a travel theme going on.  Restoration Hardware used to sell these beautiful brass ornaments of iconic structures and airplanes and such.  I bought many for places that I had been.

[Note:  A friend in Florida gave me the starfish.  It has glitter and shells, and is most charming. Doesn't photograph well, but is charming]  To go with the Eifel Tower, Big Ben, Roman Coliseum, and the Golden Gate Bride (off camera), I wanted a Space Needle, for fiancée currently lives in Seattle, and I wanted one on the tree.

But, I searched the internets, and all I saw were some cheesy looking glass ones.  So over Thanksgiving, Cora and I hunted and hunted for a nice, metallic one.  They had to have them, right?  This was the best we could find in the "Made in Washington" store.

A cheap resin one.

But there's that story about beggars not being choosers, so I bought it as a backup.  While at the festival of lights, I did buy this Borg sphere looking ornament, so that I would have a "nice" ornament to hang on the tree.  (In real life, it doesn't look like a big ball of tin foil, honest.)

On the way to the airport for my return flight, Cora and I stopped in at Wal-Mart, and struck gold.  Well, bronze.  We found two different sized bronze Space Needle paper weights. With a little ribbon & monofilament thread they became ornaments.

  To wrap up this monster post, and to get wrapping, I wouldn't want you to think that my decor is ALL fancy and sophisticated.

Yes – The hat has sequins on it.
Yes – The nose blinks.

You would expect nothing less from me, right?