A New Year

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and a great New Year!  As usual, the end of the year was busy for us.  I procrastinated on putting up our Christmas decorations, but scheduling a long overdue surgery got me moving.  I wanted to get it done for The Kid since I wasn’t sure how soon I’d be up to it after the surgery.  (Turns out, it went really well and I probably could have done most of it a week later).

Anyway, I had came across this Christmas tree and really wanted to replicate it.

I went back and forth on whether I could pull it off and finally decided to go for it.  I also wanted to replace our fiber optic tree with a white or flocked one.  I found one I loved at Home Depot, but the 9′ one was more than I wanted to spend.  I got the idea from my parents to build a stand for a 7.5′ tree.  This had the added bonus of keeping it high enough that the dogs can’t walk under it and rub the flocking and glitter off.  I bought a 24″ butcher block round when I went to buy the tree.  I used some waste 2x4s to build a cube, then screwed the table top onto it.  The tree stand fit perfectly.  It was discussed whether to anchor the tree stand to the base I made, but I decided just to try just sitting it on top.  So far, we haven’t had a problem with it moving.

I found the polar bears from the original inspiration tree on Amazon, but, unfortunately, they weren’t cheap.  So, I only ordered a set of the 12″ ones.  If I ever find the larger ones marked down, I’d love to get them.

I ran several places, but ended up buying all the decorations at Hobby Lobby and our local Design World.  It turned out better than I imagined!

I later picked up some sparkly “snow” to fill in under the tree skirt.

The red and white ribbon came from Sam’s Club last year.  The black chalkboard ribbon I picked up there this year.

The white snowball deco mesh, large white “bottle brush” ornaments and the red glitter/white fuzzy striped ornaments came from Design World.  Everything else, including the picks, came from Hobby Lobby.

One of the reminders of The Reason for the season.

I also decorated the staircase to match.  The small ornaments were extra from my backyard decorations.  I dug out my collection of stuffed polar bears and placed them around.

For the past 9 years, I’ve taken pictures of The Kid and custom designed our Christmas Card.  It didn’t get done this year, but I made a handful of paper cards using my Silhouette Cameo machine.  They took almost 4 days to make, but they turned out pretty cute!  They can stand up and rock side to side.

And one more picture of a warm rainy night around Christmas. . .

I’m not sure what 2016 has in store, but I guess we’ll see!  In the meantime, I want to get some painting done around the house – the bonus (theater) bathroom, the second floor doors and some other random areas.  I’m also looking into building a headboard like The Kid’s to sell.  If it goes quickly, I may make others to sell as well.  I also plan to finally post the final pictures of the theater.