Hello!
I decided to write this post on the day, we finally get my little tree out from the depths of my closet. It’s been in there for around six months or so, we never packed up back in January because I originally wanted to get a tote like we have for our family tree to neatly store everything, but as time went on, my hope for that to happen disappeared so I finally had my mom store it up on the rack above my clothes so it wouldn’t get too damaged.
As my mom and I were removing the silver ornaments, we quickly realized that it might’ve been a bad idea to just stuff them onto the edge of the limbs, because the tops will break off pretty easily! However, we had extra hooks for our other ornaments, and my mom left me to put them through the holes myself, which still surprises me, but this gave me more time to listen to traditional Christmas music, which I knew she wouldn’t like to hear while doing the tree together. I also stabbed myself only a handful of times so that was cool!
If you remember, my tree is black – it’s definitely not the traditional tree like our big one in the living room, but that was the point. I saw the black trees the year before and I was like, “I need one!” because I thought I could find some Halloween-y type of ornaments to put on there and lucky for me, they were selling them really cheap at Menards so I really didn’t have to beg to my mom, because she thought they were kind of neat too! It’s like the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, it’s not too high or too small for me to reach around the sides or the very top to arrange something later on. I think it’s the perfect tree for me at this stage of my life.
While we were opening up the totes for the family tree, we found something slightly weird and it was a blanket, that we all thought was at my sister’s place. It is a white fuzzy throw with dressed up penguins! Last Christmas, our old sheet that was with us for decades, finally gave away and we finally had to throw it out; and that is why we started using a blanket as “snow” underneath the tree. Once we finished decorating it, my mom wrapped the blanket around the cracking stand and from there, I thought I wanted to do something similar under my tree. We have a few Christmassy blankets in our house and I have one that my nana gave me, and I think it looks fancy so I thought if we fold the blanket in half to fit that section where I decorated for fall. We moved all of the autumnal stuff out of the way and even removed the sunflower rug so that the tree was only sitting on top of the blanket and it was seriously the best decision, because it made that whole space look bigger.
Besides keeping the black beauty, there was another thing I thought belonged on this tree from the very beginning, and it was the gold glitter king’s crown. My mom managed to find at our local Dollar Store last year. It was a lot bigger than what I imagined it to be, but I loved it so much that I knew there was no way in hell I was going to get rid of it. What we ended doing with it since it clearly doesn’t fit on the branches, we use it like your angel or star at the top of your tree, and I just thought it made sense to put it there every year! My nephew’s face when he asked why it was like that, was priceless! Thankfully, he and his parents put up their tree that same afternoon and we didn’t know about the other, so I thought it was a little cool. Oh, and he told me that their pets, one dog named Chipper and four cats: Samuel, Toni, Otis and Tavis helped too!
Out of the 16 bulbs that came in the pack, I choose to use the glittery and matte bulbs but there was one glitter ball that was definitely effected by what I explained above but the cute thing about it was my nephew went into my room and snatched it off my table and my dad was suppose to fix it that evening, and so when Nolan came back into the living room with it, papaw told him to put it on the big tree since he was redecorating it all of a sudden. It’s still there on the tree I think! Anyways, I did have to use a couple of the shine-y bulbs too, but thankfully the overall design doesn’t look too chaotic and I’m happy with that!
I had decided on before I started hooking away on my silver balls, I wanted to keep things very minimalist, and I have to say, I am not about that lifestyle because mainly I’m too sentimental to do that. I barely got through packing all of my stuff to move into this house a couple of years ago. Since I am probably going to have this tree out passed New Year’s Day, I just want that area to look clean and welcoming and I think the way I decorated that space in the fall showed me that I should think about it.
As I continued my search for new decorative pieces for my room, I found a set of ornaments in mini, and as soon as I saw that you could buy a pack of them and still be dirt cheap was the best thing for this low maintenance girl. My silver bulbs are in face mini, and I am always looking for others like them. What I didn’t expect was finding these mini farm animal ornaments. Oh my gosh! They were so cute online, but once they arrived to the house, I wasn’t prepared for how adorable they would be in real life! So, I was only able to find a pack of six in the likeness of a cow, pig, and sheep! What I really love about them is that instead of using hooks, it has a little string attached to their backs and I am forever grateful for that.
I have literally told everyone that have come to the house that all I need now are chickens, roosters, and ducks! However, I started to think about it some more later in the evening and honestly, I need a horse and goats in there too. Maybe I’ll get lucky next year and find others like them!
There was a sincere meaning for me to get these ornaments though. My mom is obsessed with cows. She has a section on her way to work and back home that have a fairly medium sized amount of black cows; and she has this thing that if there are any cows in a pond or even a good size puddle, it means her day will be good! And before anybody asks, she makes us very worried whenever she is driving and trying to find her cows at the same time! Now my nana is a lover of pigs. She told me once that she use to have a piglet as a pet when she lived in Arizona on a farm. I can’t remember the actual name of it, but ever since I keep sending her pictures of pigs on Facebook. Thankfully, she’s like her daughter and adores animals just as much. As far as I know, nobody in my family loves sheep but this was the animal that came in the pack.
The final additions to that corner are my finished “bird” project. I have been working on this statue of a cardinal for years! At one time, it belonged to my nana and papaw, but once the house had to go on sale, we got the second one. A few years ago, my dad sprayed the whole thing with gray paint and I just wanted to restore it to its former glory and repaint it in red with orange legs and make the stand into a moss-y look. I recently just finished the whole thing and I’m pretty proud of myself to finally have it look like a cardinal again. The next one is a beloved dancing Santa Claus that my papaw loved to play for all of us. He had a wide range of singing and dancing kid toys and for a couple of years in a row, he would end up receiving a different one for Christmas. Unfortunately, the one I have closest to my TV, doesn’t have batteries in it and I’m taking that as a positive because then we might lose it to Nolan too.
So, that is it with my Christmas tree décor. I hope you have enjoyed hearing of this holiday tale. Now you get to see what everything looks like as I took quite a bit of pictures afterwards.
What do you think of my Christmas tree this year? Are you the type of person to plaster every ornament you have on your tree or do you like a little clean looking with the minimalist outlook?
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