Decorate Stuff

Just a random shots of some ornaments on my Christmas Tree Chair and scenes from the chair itself. The ornaments on the tree itself are all equine themed.

I will often change things around when the mood strikes me.

 The Winged Pegasus.

On the chair itself...

I have a few more but just got distracted by other fun ideas.

Sometimes characters just show up and I just have to make a go of it.

You never know who is going 

to sit on the chair next.

I finally started to set up my Lego Winter Village.
Seems mini-me and mini-Charlie are about to 
meet Bad Santa!

Just for fun.

This is not the Christmas Chair but a scene on one of the cabinets I built earlier this year.

Nothing much going on here other than snow, cold, and more snow and more cold.

I was plowed out twice this week! And we have been snowshoeing.

PS: my kids used to call Decorations ... Decorate. Thus the way I define it!

Uh Oh, I did it! The Christmas Tree Chair!

 Well, there it is this year. The Christmas Tree Chair. 

To be fair, it is a very ancient tree I purchased in 1996 for about $19. It comes all apart and has 'dead' needles and green needles. By itself it sort of looks okay, but one year I decided I wanted a platform mixed in with the tree to put things on. 

So the tree this year is stuck in a corner and only branched in front. When it gets to the chair level, the branches come through the chair along with some garlands that are wrapped around the chair.

I use the white lights because at night it lights up the whole cottage with warm light. That makes me happy on long winter nights. 

The Chair becomes the center of action for the month of December.

My old jointed Teddy Bear I made in the 1980's always makes an appearance. [He is corduroy and I can say that I will never attempt working with that material again!]

I'd planned on snowshoeing. That did not work out. We had three Eagles hanging out in the trees near the house. Charlie could hear their chirping when we went to get the mail. I spotted them too and scooped Charlie up and tucked him under my arm. I think he understands that he'd make a nice little meal for Eagles and Hawks. 

I spent the day indoors finishing up things I've left undone.

Yep, I have a thing for old chairs. I finally finished this Painted Lady. I only need to coat it with some Satin protective finish.

Since Charlie didn't want to be outside, I moved the Turtle Stool in front of the chair and tossed a green blanket on it. Charlie hopped right up on the chair and sat down. I decorated him while he gave me this look.

I didn't expect him to stay there, but I grabbed my camera and started to shoot in case he changed his mind.

He didn't.

I took the ribbons off from him and gave him his treat. 

He ate it and then jumped back on the stool and stared at me.

Smart dog. 

We have done this every December since he came to us.

This is his first 'Christmas' photo. He was still not quite a year old in this shot. For the first few years he did everything he could to avoid eye contact with the camera or me. I then discovered if I balanced a treat on the lens he'd stare at it.

I just want to squeeze him all of the time. So darned cute.

My first iteration of things happening on the Christmas Chair.  

The Tree Topper.
Yes, it is a mule. It came from one of the trophies Rich won with his mule Opal years ago for having the State Champion jumping mule.

My 'workshop' and table that needs clearing off so I can start with the Lego Christmas Village design. 

Watch out as I go crazy enjoying setting up the buildings and creating scenes and stories both on the table and any other flat surface I can find!

Play. 

The secret to happiness.

The Christmas Chair & Charlie

 

Placing the jointed corduroy Christmas Bear that I made over 30 years ago in the seat of the chair marks the finish of the chair-tree. Lots of things will still happen in the seat of the chair, but this means I am done with any touch ups.

Now we just enjoy the light and cheer it brings to the living room especially on dull and dreary cold days.

The wooden crates around it have things in it too. Who doesn't like gnomes? Well some folks. I happen to enjoy the few I do have. 

They don't all spend their time around the tree though. The one below came out hiking with me earlier in the week when it was still quite warm out.

I found this gnarly tree ...

...and it sure felt like a place that a gnome would like to hang out in.

Our weather is changing rapidly this morning. We will warm up out of the below zero digits to a warm enough temp to have snow and freezing drizzle with ice accumulations before it gets cold again.

It looks like the Gingerbread fellow has it all under control for the North Pole. He is tuning up his snowblower!

Last but not least, I had to try this.

Charlie's Christmas Shot.

Finally, as he approaches the age of 7, he is understanding what this posing is all about. This year, it was super laid back. 

I just set him on the turtle stool and put a ribbon around his neck. Here is how we worked it out.

He is very food driven! 20 seconds.... 👇

Out take...

Final. This wasn't the best I've done, but I just wanted to get his 'face' on record for this year. He was a good boy for doing this for me.

Have a great Saturday!

Finally. Christmas Tree Chair

 

Here it is as it is lit up and decorated. I have some ornaments on it. But really didn't put tons on it this year. I used up most of the red colored ornaments I had for some color. 

I also don't always hang my special ornaments, but use them on the chair seat like this:

I'll keep changing what is on the chair or around the chair almost daily. To keep the horses from falling over, I used the string of beads. This chair seat IS flat so they shouldn't fall over, but I liked adding color with beads and ribbons.

I finally got my North Pole Village out and as I arranged things, I started to 'play'. 

I mean, this time of the year gives me a great excuse for more play, right?

Our weather is unbelievable! We went from way below frozen to 50 F yesterday. It will last through the weekend through Monday. I still am contemplating doing a Charlie photo. You know, the one where I make the dog sit in front of the tree and pose. 

LOL. He hates it but will do it for cookies!

Enjoy.

Why Decorate?

Decorate or don't Decorate its a personal choice. 

For some it is a burden. The commercials flood the radio waves, the TVs, and every store shouts CHRISTMAS at every turn. For some it feels like Christmas has missed its intended purpose. Christmas is not a Currier and Ives Scene, it can sometimes be messy, it can sometimes be wonderful.

An elderly friend in the south, told me she gave up on decorating years ago.

Her life had changed significantly. Let's just say there were tragedies in her life.

Similarly, my mother decided a few years back that she wouldn't decorate anymore. She questioned the point of it and often mentioned her dislike for Christmas.

When I was young, my mother would decorate extravagantly. Outdoor lights, a real tree, delicate glass ornaments, and those large, colorful bulbs were all part of the tradition. We joyfully threw tinsel over the tree. After we stopped believing in Santa Claus, she would pile gifts under the tree as she accumulated them.... which brought us immense excitement.

As we grew older, she opted for a tabletop tree to avoid the mess of fallen needles and the need for watering. It was neater and more convenient.

Children grow up and sometimes move away. Life unfolds in unexpected ways.

Christmas occurs during the darkest time of the year, often intensifying feelings of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). The darkness, the family memories, whether joyful or painful, are very real.

Isolation is a reality for many, as are sad and enduring memories.

My mother-in-law, however, never ceased her Christmas decorating. Post-Thanksgiving, I would help her retrieve decorations from storage. She would supervise from her chair as I replaced fall decorations with Christmas ones, set up the pre-lit tree, decorated her balcony, and arranged fairy lights, a wooden goose, and her miniature village.

Her apartment would transform into a festive haven, complete with a 'feather' tree and vintage ornaments. You couldn't even reach for toilet paper without seeing a Yuletide decoration.

When my husband and I first met, he expressed his dislike for Christmas. He didn't want me to decorate. He'd spent a Christmas in Vietnam and it was not a happy time for him at all.

That didn't stop me. I first started out with his tiny 6" tree. 

Eventually, it wasn't about Christmas so much as I wanted to light up the dark cold nights with colors and a sense of warmth. It was also a chance to deep clean the house and move stuff around. 

The Christmas season became a reason to have fun to...

Display toys and let the toys play.
Decorate the dog.
Take photos.
Be surprised, take joy in imagination...

I do it for me as generally I am the only audience for my decorating. It is like creating art that keeps transforming.

At least I have a reason now to 'play'. 

If I can make December playful with the cold days and dark nights, I'm happy. After all. No one who knows me thinks it is weird when I turn the living room into a place of play.
The toys take over as they should.

It even makes Grumpy Gus smile when he walks into the room and sees Teddy Bears doing naughty things one day and the next they are sitting quietly looking sheepish.

Decorating or making the decision not to is just fine. We can be moved to do it or not.

It is such a personal preference.

For many, Christmas can be a source of stress. I often spend Christmas Eve thinking about all the times I'd call my Father late on Christmas Eve. He'd ask me to describe our Christmas Tree. I'd tell him about it and sip a glass of wine. We'd laugh, we'd chat and I'd sit in the dark and tell him tall tales and he would do likewise.

For that, I am grateful for Christmas and the memories it brings to me each year.

This year I have 3 ugly chairs to consider for the Christmas Tree Chair. Which one will it be??

The Chair and Creative Play

When I get into the Christmas/Holidays Funk, I read what I wrote last year which was a Satirical Holiday get together for a family much like mine called Unrealistic Expectations totally made up!

I can't help but chuckle when I read it. 

In 2013 I used an old chair combined with a partial Christmas Tree in order to decorate our tiny cottage. This was before the remodel in 2016. The first time I took photos of it was in 2014 when I did it a second time. 

Even a small fake tree just took up too much room in our home. I improvised and found that it was much more fun doing something out of the norm.

This year I am changing things up a bit again. I have to admit that each year when I decorate an old chair it ends up being quite fun and never the same two times in a row. That is probably a good thing for me. The chair gives me a flat spot to continuously change up what is going on. I can walk by it and take a tiny Santa Claus and have him conversing with a dinosaur or perhaps a unicorn.

That old table that I brought in from the porch turned into a Legoland Table. Why not? Rich and I had so much fun over the past month or so building these 3 D puzzles that I decided to use them much like others would use a collection of Christmas Village houses.

The Wood Cabin build was really tough and very detailed.

The Lego Lady Contractor
shows off the Cabin Kitchen

Some of the build was extremely frustrating as the lights and wires really were difficult to work with. We found that we were missing a few pieces and the quality control was sucky at times. 

However, if I hadn't built previous Lego 'Expert' builds [The Gingerbread House], I would have given up. The roof bows and won't fit tight...but I learned a lesson. Lego Bricks Rule. I will probably dismantle parts and re make the house eventually.

The Sasquatch Family has no issues with it at all. They love it. They celebrated Thanksgiving in it before the roof was attached!

The Happy Sasquatch Family

They were so pleased when they got moved into the Lego Village.

Then the serious stuff started. Ol' Man Rich decided to take his ornament Champion Cruiser and find some Christmas Trees.

[When I told Rich that this Lego Person was him, he actually started to enjoy it. He really digs this car ornament and even pushed it around the kitchen table. He checks on what the Ol' Man Rich is doing each day. He denies enjoying it of course. But the smile on his face tells me otherwise.]

And by golly he did! He talked other friends into hauling them to the village!

Even the strange snowperson and the Polar Bears were pleased....

Having Christmas Trees in the Village would be awesome!

And every one rejoiced. I think the Lego

lady with the hair in a bun

was imbibing a bit too much?

Oh it looks like silly play doesn't it? Wasted time. But think about it. When a person decorates for any Holiday they are using their brain to create something beautiful, right? Create. That is play.

When a person knits or crochets, paints, draws, photographs, or does anything creative...they are playing. It keeps their minds active and engaged.

Play is good for the mind and soul.

Now.

If I can only think of cooking and baking as Creative Play. 

meh....

Well here we go!

Be glad I didn't start out with yesterday morning's musings. It was very Bah BAH Humbug. Really it was quite an eye opener.

Perhaps I'll write about it some other time.

We all think about Christmas Decorations right after Thanksgiving. After all, the decorations started to appear right after Halloween in the stores. The Christmas muuu--saccc started then too. 

[One of the reasons I do not listen to the run of the mill Christmas music is that it is heard everywhere in November and December, there is no escape! Your favorite Christmas music is???]

So I started with the simple things. I changed the shower curtain from the fall forest to the winter forest:

I like feeling like I am walking into a snowy scene when I walk past the bathroom door.

The Living Room -- 

and..now you have seen most of our house!

I brought in the rickety old table from the porch, I thought this might be a fun place to put Santa's Visit Lego build and the Gingerbread House along with the Wood Cabin we are still working on. The totes have all of the decorations in it. 

This corner used to be the corner where I put up the Christmas Chair. The concentrator was replaced with this monster of a thing. This corner has been rendered useless. 

That opening is our tiny downstairs bedroom that was part of the addition. The original house ends at that opening.

This wall that greets you when you walk in the back door. I made those wreaths so many years ago.  I save unique Christmas Ribbons and labels for packages. 

I purchased a pre lit 4 foot tall Birch Tree. I like it because I can use it all winter long to bring some nice light into our living room on these dark evenings.

The nesting box is exactly that, a nesting box for chickens that my mother in law had for years. She used it as a coffee table. I use it to put things in to look at.

I like old wooden boxes.
I like trees and sticks... and milk weed pods for bouquets.

In the winter the sun comes right in the south windows and shines in your eyes if you are sitting on the loveseat. So I tried curtains and they were horribly ugly. The blocked the sun and made the room so dark. 

[Note, that cabin heater is the heat for the whole house. It keeps it warm too.]

While browsing for a nice Fall Shower curtain I saw in a review how a woman used a beautiful forest scene as a backdrop in her bedroom. Someone else used it as a curtain for a sliding glass door.

So I did this.

It lets enough light in to keep the living room bright and cheery and is easy to open and shut. The orange in the corner is the basket of stuff I keep Charlie's stuff in for going out.

The Christmas Chair. Well. Hmmm. I am thinking about it, but of course am going to change it up as I always do.

As for the music? I like Trans Siberian Orchestra and instrumental music. 

Christmas Eve and Other Stories and the Christmas Attic. Favs...

Wayyy dislike any other versions of over played music. 

Lego Adult Build brings a Surprise

Something very different happened this weekend.

As some of you all know, I dig Legos. It all started when a neighbor boy gave me an old Lego minifigure.

When the neighbor this summer chucked all of her childhood Legos into the dumpster we shared...well, I did some dumpster diving and it took off from there.

Over the summer I decided to add a skid steer, a 4 wheeler, a motorcycle, and a truck for my Lego folks to get around on. 
I had so much fun with the toys this summer....

Remember Squatch? He and Hobby have searched all summer to find relatives. And Big Foot and Yeti have been too shy to step forward...
Well eventually that story will be told. I've got a lot of catching up to do...

So, I knew fall would bring cold weather and that I'd be spending time indoors. I decided to break down and order a Christmas Lego Build. I ordered Santa's Visit from Lego. It comes with nearly 1,500 pieces and is considered a Lego Adult Expert Build. 
What more fun could that be? 
I'd have a Christmas Lego Set to display!

Here is the view of the box:

When I unpacked the box and showed it to Rich, he was fascinated. Thankfully he didn't ask me how much it cost. [$99.00 😲]
He wanted to know what it was all about. When I pulled out 9 bags of Legos out of the box and set them on the table, he was even more curious.

In fact, so curious, that he started to separate the pieces as I called them out for the first build of the Christmas Tree and the fence for the yard of the house.

 He even started to play with it.

In fact...
He is so engaged in searching for pieces and seeing how it is done [he can spot where the pieces go rather quickly], that I don't do any building unless he is there too.

There are those who consider something like this a waste of money. After all, what are toys? Right?

Something very wonderful happened. For 3 days now, we have been engaged together between the times he has to rest... building a Lego Set.

He actually sort of engages in laughter and play. Like when I wanted a photo of him helping, he set his inhaler on the chimney and his nasal spray on the doorway. Huh. Funny Guy!

To engage in more play. I made him his own personal Lego Person.

Here is Rich and I:

Funny. Rich decided that the Dove should go in the tiny Lego Frying Pan and he'd stir it with an egg beater.

So what can I conclude?

Rich doesn't do puzzles as they don't interest him. But this is a puzzle in 3D. 

Lucky for us I have another build waiting in the wings.

I hope this engaging fun continues. 

We even had some more fun last night when I put some other Lego figures in the set and had one Lego gal chasing another Lego person with a frying pan.

It makes me wonder if Nursing Homes and Senior Centers would ever consider something like Duplo Builds for Seniors as engaging for those who just want to do something with their hands even though they have arthritic hands?

Just a thought.