Martha Stewart or Charlie Brown? I'm somewhere in between

So …

Every year for Christmas I like to do something a little different.  One year I did a theme which was “Holiday at Hogwarts,” and featured things such as ornaments made from empty boxes of Bertie Botts’ Every Flavor Beans.  One year I did a “traditional theme” and used wrapping paper to wrap the wall behind my tree to make it pop.  One year I made ornaments from shells we found on the beach and covered them with glitter to make a very Island sort of tree the first year we spent on this island. 

Joseph is pretty easy going when it comes to my themes and ideas and inspirations.  At times this can be infuriating, especially when I want an opinion.  But mostly I find this good for my creativity when Mr. Logical isn’t criticizing my every move.  Joseph’s one request is that we never kill a tree to make our Christmas.  I grew up in the Rocky Mountains of northern Idaho where we cut down our own tree every year.  I loved the smell of white fir and cold coming into the house.  But Joseph (who drives a beast of a pickup truck) thinks that cutting trees isn’t very environmentally-minded.  He bought me a Martha Stewart pre-lit tree that stands four-and-a-half feet tall.  It has white lights and has graced my house many a year regardless of the theme and has always looked great.  This year, however, I wanted something more natural and less symmetrical. 

I had an idea in my head, and when I found this tree on my dog walk one day, I couldn’t resist:

I knew it had potential.  I knew I could make this tree shine.  In my head I saw this tree in all its glory, thanks to my best friend Martha Stewart:

Awesome, right? 

So I set to work.  And soon I discovered a little known secret to the success of evergreens when it comes to the domination of Christmas décor: evergreens are conical and taper towards the top which is infinitely easier to wrap lights around than a tree that gets wider towards the top.  I had to string the lights twice, and I almost poked out an eye five or six times.  I used half a cinder block to prop the tree up and stuffed it with news paper to keep the tree in place, but every time I tried to adjust lights, it slid around a little.  I finally had to enlist Joseph and have him prop it up with a little hemp twine at the bottom. 

And here’s the other little secret about the success of evergreens when it comes to the domination of Christmas décor: they don’t look like skeletons!  My tree looked like I painted Kate Moss brown and tied her up in a corner.  I found myself thinking that a good cheese burger would do my tree some good, but I hung the ornaments from it just the same.  I didn’t have the money this year to buy all new tree jewelry, so I had to make do with the ornaments I had.  I strung my ornaments up with a little purple ribbon to give the ornaments the range to fall into some of the open spaces the branches made, but it still looked bare and sad. 

Okay, I thought, what this tree needs is a little snow. 

I try not to play up snow in my Christmas decorating.  I grew up in snow up to my armpits and there is nothing sadder to me than a snowman lawn ornament in a climate that shuts its cities down when it even thinks about snowing.  If you don’t have snow, don’t promote it.  But snow was the only thing I could think of to give this tree a little weight and fullness. 

If I had my way (and a lot more money) I would have bought a few white feather boas, cut them up, and used their fluffy fabulousness to fill in my scrawny tree.  (I have always thought that Christmas trees were a lot like drag queens anyway.)  So, because I didn’t have any of my own feather boas … that were white … I had to improvise and I found a bag of poly-fill to use for snow.  I pulled out puffs of polyester and stuck it at the end of branches.  The overall look was very sad and I am almost too ashamed to show you this:

What the crap is this?  When Joseph saw it he said it looked like I was trying to make a cotton bush.  That kind of made it worse and please remind me to tell you all about how Joseph almost got shot picking cotton in Louisiana when we went there to visit his family.  (No it wasn’t 1860, it was 2003.)  Needless to say, I furiously ripped every single one of these puffs off of my tree and sat down to rethink my life. 

Deep breath.

So the next thing I tried was an old reliable Christmas treatment: paper snowflakes.  Paper snowflakes got me through many a tough Christmas in apartments that were none too jolly.  What I got was a tree that had these papery, snowflake versions of leaves on it.  Fine. 

Yes, fine enough.  It was time to quit while I was ahead. 

I liked how the white paper snowflakes caught the colors of the Christmas lights.

The tree is continuing to grow on me.  It isn’t perfect, but it’s just fine for me.  But I will probably resort to the Martha Stewart pre-lit 4.5 footer next year.  Much less hassle, and much prettier effect.