Blogmas | Christmas Tree Ornaments

Howdy!

Before I start on this, I am leaving my previous Blogmas post about my Christmas tree because if you haven’t read it yet or this is your first time on here, you can get caught up on why I have adopted a very interesting way to do my tree this year.

For today though, I am discussing my process of both the ornaments and the way I took the pictures, because that in itself was a big production that some people might find enjoyable! Fun fact: I am one of those people! 

  The Ornaments  

I feel the need to mention that the day I finished writing my previous post about my tree, my whole original theme of white lights, purple bulbs, and a star on top, kind of went out the window since my mom could not find anything to match that scheme. However, my dad did say something about going to Dollar General and getting things there. So, one morning I went on the DG website and looked over their very limited holiday decorations and found two that I actually loved, and they were: a pair of angel wings that came in two colors on the site, gold and red. I really fell in love with the red ones. The other one I just couldn’t get over was the crown. If you know me well, you know I need anything royalty and I thought for this reason would be no different!

Later that day, my mom went to the store and came home with an interesting sort of things for me. She got me a box of array silver ornaments. There are the normal shiny ones but my favorites are really the glittery and matte bulbs the most. Unfortunately, they didn’t have their hooks on them already so that was a bummer, but I managed to put two of them on the tree myself before letting mom take over! Now, you’re probably wondering about the two I found online. Did we have any luck in that department? Well, I’m happy to say, she found both of them! There was a setback though, she found the wings only in silver.

This wasn’t what freaked us out though. When I saw them online, they looked pretty smell, almost the same size of the other ones she got me. No… The wings and crown are huge! We couldn’t believe it! Honestly the crown is the perfect size but the wings just look obnoxious! This wasn’t the funny thing though, because both of my parents thought it would look great as the topper, but every time I look at it, I think it looks like a vagina! I literally thought of the episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, when Marie takes an art class and the sculpture she presents to her family, looks just like a vagina. The wings are basically in the same shape but with a bigger opening in the middle, so when my mom placed it at the top of my tree, it just looked very wrong. I mean, I’m all for my Christmas tree being non-traditional, but I have to draw the line somewhere!

I managed to talk my mom into putting the wings lower on the tree, but as much as I had my heart on a star on the top, I kind of thought the crown would look better there instead. It took some convincing on my part because my mom was very adamant about the vagina–I mean, the wings on top–but it does fit on there nicely. As far as decorations on my tree, this is about it. My mom did find me some lights too, but the cord was white and since the tree isn’t as full like others, it looked a bit chaotic but all is not lost, because my mom came up with another idea for them. I don’t even know what prompt this, but she just started wrapping them around my curtain rod on both sides and it actually looks amazing with my sunflower curtain! Thankfully, the lights don’t generate too much heat that I can actually leave them on all day and night. They make my room look really cozy!

  The Process Of The Pictures  

Now that we have that part out of the way, I can talk to you about how I managed to take the photos for this blog post. I will say, it was not easy, but honestly any post that requires a lot of pictures is usually pretty difficult anyways! Between the fact that I am always adjusting myself to get the ‘perfect’ shot and basically trying not to pop out of my wheelchair and land butt (or worse, back) first on the hardwood floor, isn’t the best thing in the world. Thankfully, I can say I did not hurt myself too awful that day – I did sleep like a baby that night so I took that as a good sign!

For the first round of photos, I used my Kodak digital camera I got last Christmas. I thought the pictures turned out really good the last time so I tried it out for this part, but since I was working with higher angles, I was having a lot of difficulty keeping the camera steady enough. I was able to get a few of the ornaments in their places, so that was nice, but for the rest I switched to my tablet.

Now, I will say that I would only use this as a last resort, because they weren’t in the best quality. I think the culprit for this was because it was too dark in my room. I have become dependent on the flash and since I didn’t have enough lighting, they might not look the greatest but I honestly loved how they turned out for some odd reason. Besides this, I used something else to help make everything easier for me. My nana and papaw had this foot stool that they inherited from the aunts, and I use this to prop up my tablet to color and read. However, I hadn’t thought about using it as a tripod until that day. It took me a good hour and a half to arrange it in certain ways to get the shots I wanted, because when it comes to blog photography, I am incredibly picky! We were successful though, or at least I’ll found out if any of you send me comments about them after reading this post.

The last thing I would like to do, is find this large bag of classic Christmas heirlooms my nana gave me a couple of years ago. I think they would look awesome surrounding the tree. It would complete the whole thing I think. If we find them, I’ll update you about it on Instagram and Facebook!

What was the meaning for your Christmas tree theme? Do you have any funny ornament stories you would like to share with me? For anybody with a disability, does it normally take you a while to get everything just right? What do you use to make things easier?

Tune Tuesday | Canada 2016

Hey guys!

So this week is all about Canada! Back when we were talking about Australia, I mentioned that I had a list of where different countries and their music stood on like a top five list. Canada is the reason why I created the list in the first place! I was listening to so much that I realized how large it was getting the more I started to add on both my iPod and Spotify playlists!

Since I’ve had Canada on this rota for the last two years, I’ve had to really dig through my archives to see who I can talk about this year. I’m really surprised that Avril Lavigne was not on listed until now. There are still quite a few bands and singers that have not been talked about yet! Anyways, I’ve been an Avril Lavigne fan since 2002 while I was having my back surgeries. My roommate and I were seriously obsessed with her! I’ve always looked forward to new music from her even if people think she’s changed her sound too much. I still love her!

The next two are two that I don’t really listen to like a lot on a daily basis, but still I thought I’d include them on this post. First is Lights. I think the fact she changed her name to “Lights” so she could use that as her name (after it was already in usage by somebody else) it was legal for her to use it professionally afterwards. My friend Mandy has tried to get me to listen to her before with no such luck. It wasn’t until she released her album “Little Machines” that I started to notice she was everywhere! She’s featured in other EDM songs with Borgeous and Seven Lions. She’s not bad! The last is somebody that my sister just loves, Drake. Rap music is a genre that I don’t really listen to a lot, but I’ve realized that I have a couple rappers featured in these posts this year!

Do you know any more Canadian music? Let me know!

Tis’ Not A Naked Tree!

Hey guys!

Last week, I posted about how my nana and I got her Christmas tree up finally! It wasn’t really a challenge (for me) but it did make me realize how much stuff my parents never let me do whenever we put up our tree. Well today, I have the second day of decorating the tree and I’m happy to say I did a lot more than I thought I would, between taking pictures of basically everything in sight, I helped put on tinsel and bulbs. It was pretty interesting to say the least!

Before I got there, my mom had to buy new lights for the tree since the others nana tried didn’t work all the way. She got three boxes of 100 mini lights. I think we had more than enough lights, what do you think? I think lights are my favorite thing about decorating the tree. It’s strange how both the “red” and “yellow” are actually really “pink” and “gold” once they’re lit up. The blue has always been my favorite! We were a little worried on how we were going to put the lights on as we really couldn’t move the tree out of the space in the living room and mess up her rug and nativity scene completely. So I thought of the idea of just throwing them up and into different directions, like we had planned on doing with the tinsel. We realized we had a big batch on top that was empty! Oops! My mom had to go and fix that later!

My nana had told me that while she was attempting to put on the lights to take pictures. When she was just about to put them on the bottom half of the tree, I snapped one and the flash went off and scared the crap out of both of my grandparents! My papaw didn’t really help, but then again between the two wheelchairs we were already blocking a big section of the entrance to the room, he really couldn’t help. He did managed to play “O Christmas Tree” on the piano which boosted my mood up a little now we were getting into the Christmas spirit. After the lights were done, then came my second favorite part: the ornaments! I think last year I had done a blog post about what WE put on our tree, my sister and I’s old kiddy decorations we had made in school and whatnot. So I got to do a similar post with hers!

The difference with her tree is that there’s no ornaments that us grandchildren have made specifically for them. I mean, there’s like two different ornaments from my mom (preschool and high school!) and a random picture of my sister from grade school! The rest of the ornaments are very old (which I like!) and some were made by my great-grandmother I think. She’s got these very decorative bulbs that remind me of India on how much detail and color they all seem to have, they’ve always been my favorites of course! And then you have these slightly clear ones. Very Christmas-y, full of baby Jesus and the Hollies. The first two we pulled out of the bag were these very delicate ornaments. The one of a train was very sturdy but the other was some kind of carriage. and it felt like it was made of paper so I had to be extra careful with it!

The second picture is obviously my papaw’s. It is a silver elf and it has a long chain on it. We put it down at the bottom so it could dangle. It was from where my papaw used to work and the date of that year, 1988! Yikes My nana also has her own special ornaments. She has her Adam Lambert picture locket type of ornament and then she has an Elvis Presley bulb that took me about seven tries and three different props to get a decent picture! And to the finish it all of, she had one little modernized ornament. She has the same Garfield in a football helmet like we do as the second to last recent ornament added to the tree! We honest to God had a lot of bulbs to put on. She had to put mostly the ones with hooks on the tree as I got the same job I get at home with putting the ones withe sting on it.

After successfully finishing that part of the decorations. My mom put the angel on top of the tree! She left to go do errands and we continued on, this time putting on the tinsel. We did the same thing we did with the lights but had better throws, each tinsel was in like little strands so throwing it up on the tree wasn’t that bad, until it fell off and landed back on the floor… During this time I kept getting stuck in my wheelchair. I could lean my body to pull my legs up in the air but straightening myself out on my own wasn’t working out very well. My nana had to hold down my foot like five times during the whole thing just so I could fix myself! At least nobody landed on the floor!

This was probably the most fun and excercise I usually get in one week alone! Just trying to move yourself into the living room that is pretty difficult as to the rest of the house. My nana and papaw go into it like twice a day and the carpet is STILL not used to wheelchairs rolling around on it. 😛 When we were finally complete with the tree I had to take pictures of our finished work, but still managed to crop out the angel on top! I tried to back up enough like three times, I should have known to go for the fourth time. Oh well, it’s pretty the way it is!

What do you think?

A Very Festive Day!

Sorry for the inconvenience, but there’s been some breaking news! It’s only been December for two weeks and I’ve spend more time on Twitter and YouTube making sure I don’t miss a single Vlogmas. Now that’s dedication right there! And now we get back to our regular scheduled post!

Hey guys! 😀

On Tuesday, I decided to get up earlier than anyone in our house and stay sitting up for about four hours just keeping to myself aka watching YouTube videos and listening to music on the lowest volume ever! I went over to my nana’s at 3pm, which in a way isn’t so strange but since the skies get dark so fast that it feels later than it is. My nana had been telling me a little bit of what she wanted to do while I was over, one of which was trim the tree. Normally we have family from up north put it up, but since things were cut short this Thanksgiving, she was going to have Blondie and Brandon put it up, but she basically gave up on them and asked me instead.

In our house, my parents do basically all of the trimming. Dad unfolds the branches of the topper and my mom, Blondie and I unfold the smaller ones. I always manage to prick my toes with the pines every single time. I don’t know why, but helping nana put up her tree and I mean, I did a lot of it with her I didn’t get as hurt as I usually do. We put the top branches up first because I thought we were going to be too short in our wheelchairs to put up the tinsel and lights so we did everything kind of backwards. My poor nana had to put the stand together, which thankfully wasn’t that hard and plug the two sections together and at one point we did have the angel up. I got to put her up. It’s been YEARS since I’ve put the angel up on a Christmas tree. When we were kids, we had to remember who put it up the year before, now dad just does and it saves us a lot of time and arguing. Just before we were to put the small branches into the little holes in the stand, she looked like she was going to fall off so nana just removed it. Once everything was shoved in, like literally! The tree was up but with no angel!

The next thing on our list were the lights of course! She had extra lights out on her front porch and somebody had brought them in and she decided to see if those would work, she knew one side lit up but the other didn’t so imagine this for a second. We had this long strand of lights dragging across the floor, I’ve got one end and she’s got the other to be plugged into the socket right? I don’t know why I continued to hold it in my toes but I did. She had to go into the kitchen to find an empty socket and I was trailing behind her on my end. I felt like the caboose of a freaking train! In the end, both sets of lights that she had only worked halfway. After that, we didn’t think it was best to do anything else since it’s always best to do lights, tinsel, ornaments, rug, and nativity scene around it at last. At least that’s how we’ve always done it!

It took us maybe an hour to get everything up. The next time I go over there I’m taking pictures of the empty tree and some of the ornaments that she has, as I can create another blog post out of them too! We figured out that we are indeed doing Christmas cookies again. This time not as many, but I’m slightly worried because last year the sugar cookies were so hard, like rocks to chew. Is there something we can do about this? We just get the premade cookies from the store, is there a better alternative then to making them by scratch? I also have an idea for our last DIY of the year, but like always I can’t tell you much about it! Because you know, I have family reading this post. I can’t spill the goods! My grandparent’s entire house is so festive, I think it’s as decorated at Zoella’s house, I mean that’s how good it looks!

When my parents came back after two hours, not only was it super dark but I forgot to tell you that my mom told me just before we went over that since it’ll be dark when they get back that she’ll take me out to see the Christmas lights in the park. I am almost in my mid-20s and I got a little too excited about it. When we dropped dad and the food off at the house, I was so excited that I was seriously flapping my feet together like a seal! Driving up to the park was even cool! Some of the houses had little displays and then there was one that had its entire yard covered with lights and aired up Santa Clause and snowmen. When we got into the grounds, I was happy but a bit shocked. There wasn’t a lot as much as a couple of years ago. There were bigger ones which made me awesome! This was like the Christmas markets I’ve been hearing and seeing on Facebook for the past two years! This was as close as I’m going to get to ever seeing one of those I think! I’m pretty my mom’s favorite was the Santa riding a Harley, the lights on the tires moving like it was moving really fast! Mine was the big arches over by the lake. While she was busy trying to take pictures (and not driving off the road!) we kept hearing the ducks outside the window.

Just before it ended, we came over a hill and there was an electrical tower but a tree was blocking it as you were coming over the hill and we both swear up and down that the bell on that tower looked like a bikini! As we got closer, it definitely looked like a festive bell but far away it looked like a high waist 50-60’s style bikini! When it was over and we were at the main road to go home, we got stopped at the longest light ever! So my mom thought she would see how her pictures turned out, most of them were bury but she got quite a few good ones that I had to edit a little, but I was keeping an eye out on the light and once I said “green” she looked over and grabbed the wheel and realized there was a cop on my side of the car. Oops! We didn’t get a ticket or anything, I don’t think he even noticed us!

Do you put up your Christmas tree? Do you go by what we do or do you do something different? 

Head Against The Wall

So it’s starting to feel like spring here, and while ago I started thinking of old summer memories. I know, I wasn’t thinking of spring memories. To us, we don’t normally get a fall. Usually certain seasons start and end early. Winter and Summer are the two seasons. Our springs feel like summer sometimes. In the fall, it’s normal for it to snow and tornadoes to show up within the same week. So like I said, this spring is feel like a summer already. It’s March and feeling so good. However, it can still snow at anytime since it’s not yet officially spring yet.

One of my favorite summer memories actually happened at summer school. Kids normally hate summer school. Well, any kid in Elementary school probably loves it. I know I did. For some odd reason, everytime I went to summer school I actually loved it. Summer was my lazy time and I’m not a lazy person usually. Taking these two years off from school of any kind was a bad idea because it’s turned me into a lazy person. I’m not as a productive person as I use to be.

When I was taking summer school in high school, I think it was my second year so I was a Sophomore turning into a Junior. On breaks, we pretty much had the time to ourselves for about an hour. Giving an hour to about 30 teenagers is sometimes a bad idea. A lot of us, including myself liked to talk and watch these crazy boys who just want a free summer doing stupid stuff. Well, one day at summer school. We had some interesting fun. They usually never had all the lights on, only half we were on. The middle school was different. That side was full. So since we didn’t have much light we still had some fun.

The first break we had the group I was hanging out with went out into the hallway where the lockers were and all the teachers and aides stayed in the classrooms so we had even more freedom. We just got through the first ramp down and saw the guys wrestling on the floor. There were two boys in summer school who were training for UFC (which I think is stupid) and they were wrestling and they had decided to wrestle again during the much longer break we had. So I went out after we got released and everybody went out into this part where a bunch of classrooms are and the doors were unlocked, which was another thing that I thought was very stupid. So they went into this little hallway and into this part. All of a sudden, I hadn’t been there no longer than five minutes until I heard a thud. Then everyone went out running.

I didn’t know what had happened until later after we got released for our last break. Every single one of them were talking about it. I didn’t know who had actually done it, but when the year started up that August. I went into that infamous space to wait for my history class and saw this whiter paint on the other paint that’s been there for years. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what really happened on that day in summer school. Somebody’s head went through it I think. After that though those doors were still unlocked and I bet they kept those cameras on in the hallways were turned on the whole time for the years to come everytime they held summer school. So yeah, that’s my fun story for the day.