Hey Jorge! Where’s the tree and what’s with the fire?

Well… we’ll get to that in a moment. But now, the orna­ments! :D

A yel­low fab­ric star that Mike made when he was 5 makes the tree top­per every year.

 

Meet Snow Bear! I made him at school 2 Christ­mases ago. We were sup­posed to make a sculp­ture for a role play exer­cise, and he’s made of a Sty­ro­foam cone and some corn and seeds, but I can’t bear to toss him away.

 

And next we have my favourite chip­munk in the tree. (Jorge: but isn’t there only one chip­munk in the tree…?) I saw him at Pot­tery Barn and just had to bring him home. I’m not one who shops at Pot­tery Barn ever, but I had a gift card! :D So it was meant to be. Actu­al­ly, I orig­i­nal­ly bought him for a secret San­ta gift but I mean, who could ever give away a chip­munk with ears made of pis­ta­chio shells?

 

And here’s my Mod­el Mag­ic snow­man, made from left­over Mod­el Mag­ic I saved from school. (With a grin­ning Bob the Toma­to talk­ing toy.)

 

One year I made many of these orna­ments with shards of glass from jars and bot­tles, which I smashed with a ham­mer :D I then sol­dered the edges and paint­ed on it with glass paint. I sold and gave away all the ones that I made through­out the years, and haven’t start­ed mak­ing them again because it involves so much time and work. But I still think it was a real­ly good idea. I real­ly like the organ­ic shape of the glass and the idea that it came from a bro­ken bottle.

 

Last year I took a work­shop in felt­ing. It was an orna­ment work­shop and we made a San­ta, a snow­man, and a pen­guin. I gave away the San­ta and the snow­man and kept Mr. Pen­guin. Mike quick­ly point­ed out how he bears a strik­ing resem­blance to the Lin­ux Pen­guin.

The work­shop instruc­tor kind­ly offered us extra felt to take home to prac­tice, so with the extra felt I made this mush­room. There are also an assort­ment of pine cones and plas­tic hol­lies in the tree from flo­ral arrange­ments that Mike’s office received. I’m thank­ful for his co-work­ers who asked him to take those home for me before throw­ing out the arrange­ments :D They make excel­lent tree dec­o­ra­tions because they come with a long wire stem, which are very easy to insert into the mass of plas­tic tree nee­dles and make the dec­o­ra­tions look like part of the tree.

 

Here’s my first attempt to make a cro­cheted acorn. He has a remov­able cap too. (Jorge: and we came from the same ball of yarn!)

 

New to the tree this year are my orna­ments from the dough adven­tures. Here’s the teapot one made from the cook­ie mold my friend kind­ly passed on to me.

And here comes the crazed rab­bit and his car­rot! :D

 

But the most spe­cial thing about the tree this year is the fire­place under the tree. Yes, a fire­place in an apartment!

TA-DA!!

Mike built this fire­place by run­ning this video on a gum­drop Mac he got for free on Craigslist. Isn’t he the most bril­liant? :D

It is a fire­place one can hug! (And it’s quite warm!)

 

Just so every­one can ful­ly appre­ci­ate this love­ly Mac fire with us I took a video with the Zumi! If you lis­ten care­ful­ly you’ll hear it crack­le like a real fire­place! :D

 

 

Warm wish­es to you and your family!