Sparkling Pink

This is our little Valentine’s Day tree.  For now, I’ve used some Christmas ornaments that aren’t exactly Christmas-y, or Christmas colored.  I have more Valentine themed stuff on the way though, so it’ll have hearts on it soon, too.  :) 

Do you do any special decorating for St Valentine’s Day? 

I took a close up of one of the ornaments – now you know I think of you often, Sparkling Red!  😀

Sunrise, so to speak.  What I found most interesting about this one is the neighbor’s car is gone.  Which means the neighbors aren’t home.  Which means it’s quiet.  *sighsofcontentment* 

And now the blizzard has started – the update I just got says 4-8 inches by midnight.  Safe journeys to my husband, and all the other commuters out there who have to drive in the mess.

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Half Past

The kids are halfway through the first quarter of the school year.  So far so good, yay!  I think we’ve adapted to our new schedule pretty well. 

I’ve been working on my little Valentine’s tree most of the afternoon and I think it turned out pretty cute.  I’ll post a snapshot of it in a couple days, so you can see. 

It’s been snowing most of the day around here.  At one point it was coming down so fast my son said it looked like fog.  Yeah, I was done with winter about six weeks ago, personally.  Scratch that.  I was done with winter in 1978. 

No school tomorrow, woo!  The kids and I be enjoying ourselves and doing our level best not to succumb to cabin fever.  😉

How’s the weather by you?  Are you in the dark and drearys too?

Sunrise 02-05-13

 

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Welcome February

Did you have a good weekend?  We sure did.  :)  We didn’t go anywhere or do a blessed thing, just sat and played and had absolutely no pressure on ourselves to do anything but relax.  Sometimes you simply need time like that, you know? 

This is the little centerpiece thing I made for February.  I’m not entirely happy with it yet, but I do like the sweetheart candies around the candle.  Oh!  That reminds me!  I need to get my St Valentine’s tree up!  That’ll be fun.  🙂

So what did you do over the weekend?  Did you get to do things you enjoy?

 

Sunrise 02-04-13.  Snow.  *sigh* 

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I’ve seen the light!

Well, strings of them actually.

It’s an established fact that one of the biggest reasons why I refuse to get a real tree at Christmas is because of the lights.  I tried it a couple of times, the last time as a young adult, and I swore, never again!  Not that I don’t adore the wonderful fragrance of real Christmas trees, oh I love it lots.  But I hate the needles and I hate the sap and I feel guilty and I hate the needles, and let’s not forget the awful, stabbing needles!  I remember still vacuuming them up in the summer when I was a teen and my mother had gotten a real tree for some reason the previous Christmas. 

So, I don’t do the Christmas tree lights.  Honestly, my way of doing the lights even on a fake tree is to take the whole pile of wires and just kind of toss the mess at the tree like a bridal bouquet.  Catch, Tree!  Which drives my husband absolutely insane.  We both tend to be perfectionists and mostly in similar areas, but this is one where we’re polar opposites.  He loves Rockwell-esque Christmas tree perfection and I’m more of a “no worries, nobody will see that side anyway” kind of tree decorator.  

But this is why we get pre-lit trees.  No muss, no fuss.  Years ago, when we had a big tree, I used to just put it in a giant mattress storage bag, lights, ornaments, tinsel and all, and just haul the thing out to the garage.  Easy-peasy! 

This spring however, we were able to put up an Easter tree, using one of the little colored Christmas trees we picked up last winter.  I took it out of the box and set it on a bookcase and when Darc got home, the first thing he said was, “Did you do the lights?  That looks horrible!”  To which I replied, “I don’t do lights, remember?  That’s how it came out of the box.” 

So, the following weekend, he proceeded to remove the lights from the tree to re-do them the right way.  And I have to say, it was the weirdest strand of lights we’ve ever seen in our lives.  It was basically 2 loops, one slightly larger than the other, with a plug.  There was no beginning or end, it was just these 2 loops.  What the … how are we supposed to work with that?  Well, him, not me!  I didn’t even supervise! 

It must have taken him over an hour to get the lights back on.  The kids may or may not have learned a new colorful word or two.    It was one of those projects that should have been short and sweet, but became frustrating and tedious.  All for just a few lights on a little tree! 

But who makes loops of lights?  It even sounds weird.  Light loops.  Loopy lights.  Looped lights.  *sigh*  Just plain weird.  I get loopy just thinking about it!

Anyway, the lights got done eventually, all by Darc, all by himself, with no help from me.  Because, you know, I don’t do lights*.  And the kids and I got the tree decorated in time for Easter.  Yay! 

*But I will do windows.  Occasionally. 

Sunday’s Coming!

When the lights all died on our little Christmas tree this past season, and we decided to grab the trees that were on sale for dirt cheap at a dept. store, I hadn’t thought further than Christmas.  I know, I know, what do purple and pink have to do with Christmas?  I have no freaking clue, but I love pink and purple, so I grabbed one of each color tree, in addition to the traditional green one.  Did I mention dirt cheap?  I think I paid less for all 3 than I did for the original one that died. 

Flash forward to this spring, when once again Darc and I talked about putting up an Easter tree.  It’s something we’ve wanted to do for YEARS but other things always seemed to get in the way of that.  For one thing, finding a tree to decorate for Easter isn’t anything like picking up a Christmas tree.  No one sells “Easter trees.”  It just isn’t done.  Oh sure, some folks will string up plastic eggs on the trees in their yard, but we wanted something indoors, like a Christmas tree, but … not.   After lots of searches online, I could find little more than leafless branches stuck in a pot, or super expensive metal affairs.  Neither one suited my purpose. 

But then I remembered I had pastel colored Christmas trees!  They were still in the boxes, I’d never even unpacked them, since I didn’t even get them until the post-Christmas sales. 

Okay, now to hunt down Easter ornaments.  Well, a little easier than Easter trees.    Whew!  And I also found some religious ones, to boot.  Lastly, on to the hardware store to pick up some nails. 

The kids and I put it all together yesterday and I think it looks pretty decent.  Now my daughter wants a tree for every holiday!  I confess, the idea is really growing on me.