Yup, I cherish this time of year more than any weirdo you know. I love Christmas music. I love snow. I love things covered in glitter and sequins. I even love The Christmas Tree Shoppe. I feel like you have a right.....nay....an OBLIGATION to make your home as fun as humanly possible, especially when you're allowed to string lights wherever you want to! No it's cool. I say you can. You can even do it the day before Thanksgiving and impress your guests. To me Thanksgiving decorations are ugly turkey things and pilgrims with a terrible sense of style....all in shades of brown and grey. And I don't think I'm alone in saying cornucopias just plain weird me out. They remind me of the movie Tremors. Shudder.
Over the years I put together a sick stash of decorations. Usually it's all gold and classy and nature themed. But the new tree inspired me to go a little crazy....which spread to the kitchen......dining room and bathroom. And I keep going. Use these handy tips and photos to help spread holiday cheer in your home and on your electric bill.
- LIGHTS, LIGHTS, LIGHTS.........you don't have enough. No you don't. I know you don't. You know how? Because you can NEVER have enough lights. See them on sale? Buy them. Stash them away. See them at a garage sale? Scoop them up! We will make Clark Griswold look Amish.....and we will put them all INDOORS.
- TREE LIKE YOU MEAN IT........This year we did NOT throw our tree across my backseat and out the two back windows. What? I wasn't scratching the paint.......and we live down the road from the tree place anyway. Calm it down. No this year I don't get to enjoy having my real life pine tree air freshener rubbed all over the car. This year, I saw Goodfellas and thought.....I NEED a white Christmas tree. Ordered it and it was here faster than you could go get your freaking shine box.
Don't judge my QVC watching.....it's good background fodder. The volume doesn't change and those two ladies just went on a 4 minute rant about how they used to want crutches and wheel chairs for Christmas because they thought they looked fun. Then they both admitted needing more attention.......See what you miss?
- ornament placement 101- This is assuming you have taken the pre-req for this course, Ornament Placement 100. So you know, little stuff on the top big stuff on the bottom and for Pete's sake spread out your colors. See? You already know more than Player 2. He's not allowed to touch the tree....so he made his own this year. More on that later. Don't forget to carefully place any "ugly but necessary" ornaments strategically behind larger beautiful ones. There's a Boba Fett AND a Millennium Falcon on that tree but you'd never know it upon first glance. (Editor's note: It's JANGO Fett...duh.)
This year I noticed a theme in my ornaments so I started grouping the ornaments to build a natural scene. Like a natural scene shot with a glitter cannon. Which is also on my list this year.
- we haven't gone this far to not buy matching wrapping paper- There's no way we are going to clash with our beautiful work of art. BONUS: It forced me to wrap presents early for that department store look I'm really going for. If the department store was in Graceland.
- GIVE THE BLANK WALL TO THE KIDS.....OR YOUR PLAYER 2- Check this project out. It's our 8 bit Advent Calendar. Do you like tedious crafts that if you make one wrong move you can completely ruin hours of work and have to start from the beginning? Then you'll love Perler Beading! Perlers are tiny little colored plastic tubes that you arrange on a pegboard in a design. Then you iron the board and the pegs melt together leaving you with really what could only be nothing but an ornament. Or garbage.
But leave it to Player 2 to love it enough to construct an advent calendar. Guess what theme we went with?
- FINISHING TOUCHES- Nice touches of traditional greenery and wool stockings will help absorb the 13,000 kilowatts you have blaring from all corners. Put all your classy Christmas in the dining room. This is where we "reign it in" so people don't think we've completely lost it. Until they use your "Space Bathroom".
- GET WEIRD WITH IT- Ok. Weird-ER. So someday I'll show you how to do fun space bathrooms with dinosaur accents, but today I'll just remind you not to forget to get your dinosaurs in the spirit for the season........
:) Brooke