Crafty Christmas Touches

Once upon a time, I was a Christmas decorator at a local house museum.  It was then that I began making Christmas decorations.  A good friend was my decorating partner, and we had some crazy ideas.  Being co-chairs of the event, we even got to foist our crazy ideas onto the other decorators because we chose the themes.  One year was jewel tones. One year we insisted on all blue and silver.  There was some grumbling from decorators that it was more Hanukkah than Christmas, but the house was unique and sparkly.  Another year, we chose a prairie theme.  Now that was unique! We pulled an enormous dead evergreen wreath out of my garage and hung it in the rotunda.  All the needles were still on it and they had turned a marvelous copper color.  We put sheaves of wheat in the windows and tied dried cockscombs to the staircase.  A flower shop created a tree from corn husks for the library, as I remember.  The house was wild.  Visitors either loved it or hated it I guess, but they'd certainly never seen anything like it.

Anyway, being cheap and creative -- as an artist, she is much more more creative than I -- we made a lot of our decorations.  The rooms in the mansion are large with very high ceilings.  What we soon realized, is that large rooms eat your decorations up.  Something that looks huge at home looks puny at the museum.  So we made do.  One year we decorated the maid's room with food.  (I've forgotten what the theme was that year.)  We made cinnamon cookies that we loaded with lots of extra cinnamon for smell, and then decorated with glitter.  Not edible glitter, just glitter.  We also made gumdrop trees.  My daughter was especially fond of those gumdrop trees, so we used them at home the following year or so until they looked mangy, and later made new ones.  This year I found a few old gumdrop trees in the attic.  I don't know how old they are, but they are well past their prime.  Some of the gumdrops were falling off and the color was a little weird too.  But instead of throwing them away, I decided to "frost" them.

Awaiting their finishing touches of fresh greenery.

I am using a lot of white in our dining room this year, which started with the coffee filter wreath I showed you last week. I completed the buffet under the mirror with white Dresden angels my mother passed down to me this year, crystal candle holders with white candles, and a white poinsettia.  I had the idea that I wanted some white trees on top of the hutch on the other side of the room, and here were these old gumdrop trees.  First I gave them a lightish coat of white spray paint.  Spray paint doesn't cover gumdrops all that well, but I wanted some of the original color to show through, so that was okay.  Then I saw Nici at Posed Perfection's blog post about using Epsom salt to frost pine cones. Brilliant! I picked up three pounds of Epsom salt at Walgreen's for less than four dollars.  That's some cheap craft supplies!  I slapped Mod Podge on the gumdrop trees and coated them in Epsom salt.  I like the way they turned out.  I won't be able to save them, but that's okay, they were due for the trash anyhow.

Another little touch of white is my farm animal collection.  I made some of these last year after seeing them on Viva Revival, a great blog by Michelle, a jewelry designer and all-around creative gal.  I made a couple more this year because my little barnyard needed to grow.  Check out Viva Revival for the how to's.

The lighting isn't good, so you can't see that they are sparkly.  

The last item is a picket fence we use to keep Alfie from bumping into the food tree.  The husband made this from inexpensive wooden garden fencing.  We also have a single panel that he put "feet" on that we use to keep Alf out of the living room.  It's much cuter than the old baby gate we used to use!

I can see that I need to center the tree a little better in the fence.

Timber!

We had tough time finding a Christmas tree this year.  On Sunday we drove sixty miles to the tree farm we discovered last year near the Wisconsin border.  The tree farm is 350 acres.  There had to be a tree that was just perfect, but if there was, we didn’t find it.  We trudged for hours.  Too short, bad color, bad shape, too gappy.  It wasn’t just us, either.  We kept seeing the same people wandering around, treeless.  

As we were beginning to wear down, heading into yet another field, we met a man and his son leaving that area empty-handed.   “Any good trees back there?” my husband asked.  “No,” said the man.  “We’re heading across the road.”  There was another, newer area there.  Well, by this time, we were beat.  The fun had begun to wear off, and my son said he didn’t care anymore, we should just get a tree.  So we went into the area forsaken by the man and his son and found a fir that was tall, had good color and shape but, like so many of the trees at the farm, had grown too closely to another tree and had a kind of baldish area on one side.  No problem, we thought, we’ll just put that side in the back.

carnage

At 1:25 Monday morning, Alfie gave a sharp bark and rushed to our bedroom door.  “It’s all right, Alfie,” I murmured.  “Go back to sleep.”  Within seconds, our daughter had rushed to our door.  “Did you hear that crash?” she asked as she turned on our light.  My bleary eyes opened to the glare of the light as the realization hit.  Oh no.  My husband, daughter, and I headed downstairs and, sure enough, the Christmas tree – all nine feet of it – lay on its side on the living room floor.  Water was running across the floorboards to pool by the baseboard.  Broken ornaments littered the rug.  An Old World pocketwatch was shattered, a fabulous pink flamingo wearing a Santa hat was reduced to only a head and neck, several ornaments lost feet, and a number of other glass ornaments were just shards.  

Almost two hours later, the tree was righted, the water was mopped, the glass was cleaned up, and the tree was anchored via fishing line to a nail hastily driven into the window woodwork.  My husband says the baldish area made the tree weighted too heavily to the front, and that’s why it fell over.  That, combined with the heavier ornament count on the front, was enough to do it in.  So now, the tree is leaning drunkenly backward toward the window, but it’s only noticeable from the side.  And, really, who cares?

Luckily, the lights still work and we only lost a relatively small number of ornaments.  The fact that much of the tree hit the living room rug surely helped avert a larger disaster.  We’ve learned an important lesson.  Steer clear of misshapen trees and hedge your bets with some fishing line.

the tree who lived

Christmas Tree Traditions

Are you a traditionalist or a game changer at Christmas time?  Growing up, I was in a family of game changers.  The year before I was born, my mother put fiberglass “angel hair” on the Christmas tree.  She had a toddler at the time.  I’m pretty sure that would be against all kinds of safety rules today but, surprisingly, my brother managed to survive it without any lasting damage.  Later, we were the ultimate 1960s family with a silver aluminum tree centered in front of the bow picture window of our 1960s ranch house.  The tree was hung with red Shiny Brite ornaments and illuminated by the requisite rotating color wheel.  I loved that tree!  In the 1970s, after my father retired from the army and we settled down on eleven hilltop acres in Tennessee, my parents often bought live Christmas trees.  And I mean ones to plant in the yard after Christmas.  This meant we couldn’t leave the lights burning on the tree for too long at a time as my parents worried about damaging the tree.  It also necessitated a huge washtub to hold the root ball, which was covered by a white sheet.  By the time my parents moved into a condo, there was a row of gorgeous, two-story-tall white pines along the property line.  It was so amazing to see those giant pines and remember that they were once our Christmas trees.  In addition, we seldom decorated the tree the same way.  One year we covered the tree with silk poinsettias and red ribbons, some years there was shiny tinsel garland, one year I made a garland of ribbon chains.  Even the location changed.  The tree was usually placed in the family room, but sometimes the living room. 

1993

Now I am in a family of hard-core traditionalists.  Even moving the tree to the other side of the living room causes an outcry.  There has been some flexibility on garlands, but the ornaments are always the same (although the collection increases in size every year).  The most longstanding tree tradition in my family, though, is also the best.  We always go to a tree farm and cut down our own tree.  In 1993, when our son (the youngest) was not quite two, we made our first trek to a tree farm.  We had moved from the city to one of the more remote collar counties outside Chicago.  Our friends from the city thought it would be fun for all of us and our little toddlers to cut our own trees.  We had a blast and a tradition was born.  Our friends, on the other hand, had a miserable time and went back to tree lots the following year.

2010

When we moved to our current house, about fifteen years ago, we searched around for the perfect tree farm, and we found it.  It was about 35 miles away and had the absolute best cider donuts you can imagine.  Oh my god, a hot cake donut dusted with cinnamon sugar after a cold tramp around the fields is heaven!  And we always tramp.  We never take the hayride, the wagon, or any other mode of transportation.  Sadly, our favorite tree farm closed in 2009.  Last year, we found a new place.  It is a little further away, and there are no donuts (sigh), but dogs are welcome and, get this, there are reindeer and even a live camel.  I still have more than a week to wait, but I’m really looking forward to heading out to the tree farm.  I just hope it snows.