The Christmas Tree ... starts....

Sometimes you need a supervisor. In my case, the supervisor holds court from the middle of his couch with a chew bone.

I often ask his opinion on things and he just gives me a look and a slight wag of the tale. I take it to mean that he approves of the new 'Christmas Chair' that I purchased this past spring.

It always starts with a deep cleaning. The space I have to work with isn't large at all. I am not one to do things exactly the same way as I've done before so each year, I try a new approach.

This is living room to the south in the photo above....☝👆

and

...the living room to the north...in the photo below....👇

this is it...

now you see almost all of our house. 

The Hutch houses things like camera lenses and Lego builds along with minifigures. The old table is where I do much of my indoor photography.

The room in behind is our tiny bedroom. 

Of course this is what things look like when I have scattered stuff willy nilly...

and then I make a huge mess...

It is no secret that I like boxes. I have old shipping boxes, dynamite boxes and fruit crate boxes as my movable units for books and things I want to display. They all get emptied and rearranged for the month of December. [I actually constantly move them around and restack them the rest of the year.]

In the winter months sunlight comes in directly through the south facing windows so I use a printed shower curtain to diffuse the light. Odd, but it really works and when the curtains are drawn, there is a nice lit up scene to view.

This chair is ugly but it exactly why I love it. The challenge is to make it beautiful. I started this year with a pine cone garland that is bendy-twisty. I'll adorn the chair with it.

In years past, I've always used an old white lacey table cloth as a 'tree skirt'. This year I won't. I want to keep the warm feeling of the wood floor. The lights reflect a nice warm light when bounced off the floor.

I moved my little birch tree into the dining area of the kitchen and added some red battery operated lights. In the dark mornings, it creates a nice glow of color in our eating area.

As soon as deer hunting ends, I'll be out looking for golden rod stalks that have bumps in them along with milkweed pods and grasses to fill my vases with dried floral arrangements. This is something my Grandmother Pearl did in her tiny cottage so many years ago. I always loved her little arrangements.

In the summer I bring in flowers from the garden, in the winter I bring in sticks, grasses, and elements from the outdoors for bouquets. It works for me and gives me pleasure.

Hubby is used to this now after all of our years together. He refers to my bouquets as 'weeds'. 

I won't bore you with any more of my ramblings.

How do you decorate? Do things you use have fond memories? Do you have heirlooms? Real trees? Fake trees? No trees? 
Do you like white lights? Or are you multi colored?
Traditional? Not Traditional?

I decorate with a goal of visual creation in mind. It is more for myself than anyone else as we rarely have visitors here.

My supervisor is the one who takes more interest in what I do....

well....

Making a righteous mess!

I always start out with a big mess in a tiny room. There are two huge bins of stuff and each year I sort it and try to do something different.

The snow men are a new addition to my collection of 'stuff'. I have no idea what the dragon is doing there, however she seems to be looking at the tipsy snow man that has the Jack Daniels bottle. Obviously the other snow men think it is funny. 

Santa looks peeved.

The mess is starting to come alive. I stopped there and quit for a while. I had no idea what I wanted to do.

Charlie as usual decided to help. He spotted the bigger snowmen in the box and thought perhaps I should give them to him as chew toys. To his credit, he left them alone.

Another start and stop. I decided the snowmen and polar bears should have a igloo. I covered a gourd with foil for a shape and used Sculpey Air Dry Clay to make an igloo.

It is still drying! 

Talk about doing stuff on the fly. However. I'm never really in a big rush for getting things decorated. 

We almost never have any guests even pre pandemic so basically this is just for my enjoyment. I say my because I think hubby just tolerates my antics. He smiles and says It looks nice when I ask his opinion. 

I do a lot of experimenting and a lot of re-arranging. I'll set something up and after a week, I'll change it. I need to keep things interesting.

So I leave it here, with my fairly ugly mess of things. The igloo was finished today.

I see that the Elf on the Shelf decided to get in on things.

I don't think his choice of partners was a wise one....

But he doesn't look too worried!

Please feed the dinosaurs before working with them!