The Great Christmas Tree Disaster

I love to decorate Christmas trees. I brought many of my decorations down to Belize with me, but still have seven crates of decorations sitting in the US. Every time we take a trip north, I look at them, and try and find a way I can get them down here....I haven't figured it out yet.

I have ornaments that my daughter made when she was in grade school, and some that my Grandmother gave me. I think I even have some little cardboard and glue thing that my granddaughter made for me. Every year I buy a dated ornament for the tree.

Three days ago I got out the Christmas decorations. I stared at them for two days. Yesterday, I decided to spring into action. (Ok, "spring" may not be the appropriate word here).

The 4' tree we have in our house upstairs was left here by the previous owner. Several of the wire branches are missing, so it's a true art form to bend and shape the branches that are left into something that doesn't resemble Charlie Brown's Christmas tree.

To top it off, the slide in, three piece base that is supposed to hold it up, was not included in the sale of the property apparently. So every year, I had to rig up some way to hold the tree upright, preferably in a vertical position. This year I decided that it would be good to place the base of the tree into a heavy glass vase, inside a large can covered with foil. In order to keep the vase in the center of the can, it required me to fill the space between the vase and the can with assorted colored stones and shells.

As you can see from the next two pictures, engineering is definitely not my forte.....


I heard a loud crash a few hours after I had completely finished unwrapping, untangling, rewinding, restringing, and refabricating all the decorations onto the tree. Apparently my attempts at keeping the tree vertical had failed.....not to mention that all of the lights,



tinsel, garland, and ornaments took a fall onto the tile floor.....and to top it all off, the entire tree came apart in it's carefully constructed three sections.....




The three little wooden snowmen couldn't bare to watch, and turned their faces to the outside....




Masterful engineering, a few pieces of wood and about ten minutes and Fernando solved my vertical problem...


And on two other notes:

1. While I was putting this little blog together, we had a visit from the new San Pedro garbage truck. Unopened, with no workers in the back, this is a smooth, quiet ride. It did, however, have the same scent as the old truck.


2. Advent calendar photo by Harry Taplin for December 10, 2008

Color for the longer night hours
Ocean City, New Jersey 2006