Sunday, 05 December 2010
Yesterday we visited Krueger’s Christmas Trees to select and cut down this year’s Winter Solstice Tree. They try really hard to practice sustainable tree farming, and they give part of their profits to all sorts of hippy non-profit organizations. So, it’s been an annual tradition for us; this is our third year venturing to Krueger’s.
We bought a Canaan Fir (Abies phanerolepis). Here’s a picture of it all gussied up for the Holidays:
And today I took close-up pictures of some of our ornaments, so you can see the kind of thing we decorate with:
Here’s an ornament celebrating the upcoming Solstice. My wife made this from scratch. She molded the shape from clay and painted the sun on it.
And here’s one that Owen made (actually, there are two here – he also painted that one in the background). This wooden stocking has a metal hook to hold it onto the tree, and the hook terminates in a bell. Owen painted this when he was two years old, and Jennifer wrote “Owen 2007” on the side (barely visible due to my lousy photography).
Jennifer also made some gingerbread people (and cats, too) from scratch. This one represents Owen. Cause, you know, nothing says “Owen” like ruffled wrists, ankles, and a red bow tie. Jennifer said she has to make one for Isla now that she’s in our family. I’ll keep you posted.
Here’s another custom-made ornament, only this one isn’t quite ‘from scratch;’ Jennifer drew and colored this picture, then uploaded it to some website that then put it on an ornament for us. She did the same thing with a mug, too, and so Owen has a mug that looks just like this (his name is on it, too).
Okay, so the actual photo in this frame is in focus, but again, I just took a really bad picture. It’s hard to focus when there’s light coming from every angle and there are tree branches at every distance between the lens and my subject. Anyway, here’s another unique ornament of a vintage frame with our family’s photo in it. A photo that, like the gingerbread men, is sure to make Isla feel left out.
Well, these guys have seen better days. In fact, the ornament on the left hasn’t seen ANY days lately, as his eyes fell off. We made these out of corn husks and dried corn back in 2007. It was fun to make some ornaments using such simple materials. My sister says they’re kind of voodoo-ish. She’s like that.
This ornament says “Our First” (barely visible) on it because, well, it is all that’s left of our very first Xmas tree. We purposely saved this slice and Jennifer decorated both sides of it. I drilled the hole, so don’t think that Jennifer does all the artsy stuff around here.
[Oops – wait – that’s not all that’s left of our first tree. There THIS STUFF, too.]
And before you ask, “Hey, do you guys make every ornament you hang up?” I submit these…
I call this our “ornament archetype,” since, to me, it best embodies the mental image I conjure up when I hear the term “Christmas tree ornament.” Jennifer also bought a set of 20 smaller colorful balls to hang from the tree, but this one – larger, metal, and with a bell inside – still holds the record for most typical ornament.
This is our oldest ornament. In fact, we even hung it up in 2006, a year in which we didn’t even have a tree. It came in the mail one year (2004?) as a Thank You for our donation to the Humane Society. I didn’t have the heart to get rid of it, so I just kept it in a drawer in our kitchen. This allowed Satan access to our home, where he insidiously convinced us that hanging out with our family on December 25th was ‘funner’ than knocking on doors. Damn you, Devil. Damn you.
…and here’s our newest ornament. It was free with our purchase of the tree, so it’s been in our home for about 24 hours now. I think it’s an opossum. With glad tidings, I’m sure.
And here’s the topper to our tree – an image of the sun with human face on it. We used to have a five-pointed star that we made out of willow branched (the same time and place we made those corn husk people, above), but it fell apart while in storage this past year, so we nixed it in favor of this guy. Also, my sister complained that the willow branch star had “a little Blair Witch going on.”
She’s like that.