The Kitschmas tree.

I know I said we weren’t going to have a “proper” Christmas tree this year, but since Spence has been pulling the fabric one off the wall anyway, & Punk has been enthralled with every Christmas tree we pass, when I saw this old plastic tree complete with vintage baubles (the type of which I honestly haven’t seen for years & years) at the oppy for $5… well.

It’s smaller than the tree we have so I was able to put it up on the cupboard away from my grabby babe & I can’t tell you how happy it has made me!

If you’re going to have a plastic tree, you might as well have one that screams it from the rooftops first of all. This tree doesn’t pretend to be a real tree, it says “I’m plastic. I have hard spikey plastic branches & a trunk moulded to look like no wood you’ve ever seen. Deal with it.”

Then there is the Santa. I don’t know if he’s supposed to be a tree topper, but he’s bloody perfect as one.

And the baubles. Oh, the baubles! Look at the colours! I had to re-thread about half of them, they either had no cord to hang them or had already been restrung on elastic bands that were so old & brittle they broke into pieces when I picked them up.

A couple of little old ornaments make it, I think. My thrifted deer has taken his rightful place on a Christmas tree, he didn’t like the mantle where he couldn’t even stand up properly.

And that is our Christmas tree. It makes me smile every time I look at it. It is going to see years of happy Christmases now, I hope it’s already had many.

Oh Christmas tree…

When I started thinking about putting up the Christmas tree I realised pretty quickly that I’d have to re-think the whole thing due to Suspence being a climbing monkey octopus & the fact that, in our teeny house, the only place I could put the tree was a prime “pull off the ornaments & tip the tree over in an instant” position.

I was searching last night for an inflatable Christmas tree. We actually had one years ago, with inflatable ornaments & star & I loved it’s kitchy goodness until the cat attacked it, so I thought it would be the perfect kid-proof option, but the online options were dismal so I nixed that & started looking for christmas tree wall decal instead. I found quite a few, some very lovely ones too, but, well, I’m cheap. You know it, I know it, there is no point in pretending that I would be shelling out $90 for a sticker, no matter how lovely, so it was back to the drawing board again.

Maybe I could make something? I remembered a project in a book I have about using starch to stick a piece of fabric to the wall like wallpaper so I thought I’d give that a whirl.

I could only find spray starch at the supermarket so that’s what I got. I tested a piece of fabric & it seemed to stick pretty well so I got down to cutting a whole heap of circles from my fabric stash.

I sprayed the wall, placed on my fabric, sprayed it again & flattened/removed the excess moisture with a sponge.

Not only does it look tops, it smells nice too! Oh, and it’s totally Suspence-proof. He tried to peel off a bauble & couldn’t… woot!

Linking up here!

It's Getting Festive Up In Here...!

The Christmas tree is up, the lights have been switched on & the first day of the advent calender has been opened to reveal a yummy little chocolate Santa & a Christmas balloon.

Hurray!

"Baby's 1st Christmas" Decoration from last year, I'll be letting Punk pick her own decoration to add to the tree this year.

Look very closely... can you see the elusive "Christmas Loon"?!

Mmmmm, advent-y goodness. This is going to sound like a weird question... but how do you open yours..?! Do you go from 1 to 24, or, like me, do you countdown from 24, so that on Christmas Eve you open number 1 which means THERE IS JUST ONE MORE SLEEP?!