Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
User Journal

Journal SolemnDragon's Journal: Holly daze 13

Journal by SolemnDragon

We're gearing up. SHopping, feh, we don't need to do much shopping. I get to do stockings for four (or five, if el pancho graces us with his presence. Hey, pancho- want some pancakes? I'm legally required to make a pancake breakfast on Christmas morning.) and a tree. I need to get ornaments for said tree. I picked up a few last night.

Well, we are doing a couple of presents, because blinder needs a few things, and i want to see his face when he opens the box. Heh. So i gotta get some paper and ribbon. But the rest of y'all are out of luck.

Er, mostly.

L, it's from both of us.

The tree will be delivered tomorrow night. Tree! A tree! I get a treeeeee!

I'm excited. I've never had one on my own, mostly because i'm daunted by the prospect, and setting it up and decorating it alone would have been no small task for me. So this will be my first holiday tree that didn't belong to someone else entirely, and i'm thrilled.

I bought the first ornaments last night- little gold-dipped leaves, very victorian and beautiful and simple. I don't hold with trees that look tinselly and gaudy. I like nice delicate ornaments and small twinkly lights. We might do purple lights. That was blinder's idea. I'd like that.

I have a star made of shell for the top.

Our tree will be different from my family's traditional version, in that it might NOT end up looking like it has been decorated by assault from drunken elves. No tinsel, because that makes animals sick, and i care about Ceridwen (aka HerMajestyTheKitten) too much for that.

I'm a big fan of the heirloom ornament theory- collect things to pass down. Pretty things that will last. And not millions of them- just enough to look full, and they don't have to be evenly spaced, but they do need to not look like they have been physically thrown at the tree. (To achieve this effect, i strongly recommend not physically throwing the ornaments at the tree.) It also helps not to knock the tree down more than twice, not to use scissors on anything electrical, and not to use anything made predominantly of piano wire or full of sulfuric acid.

Did i mention evil won't be doing the decorating?

Of course, you also have to have the obligatory toilet-paper-tube angels and clothespin reindeer that children make for you, that's a given.

What kind of tree does your family do?
What do you like?

This discussion was created by SolemnDragon (593956) for no Foes, but now has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Holly daze More

Holly daze

Comments Filter:
  • Well, it is green, has lights and ornaments. Yeah, nothing too special there. The family tree (at my parents house) usually has a handful of generic ornament sets, those kind that come in like packs of 20, then sprinkled in with family ornaments. Such as ornaments I made when I was in like preschool, or things I have bought to represent Virginia Tech. Similar things for my parents, such as a crystal unicorn for my mom, or something related to Jeff Gordon or the Oakland Raiders for my dad.

    My tree at home i
  • I like those big ceramic Christmas lights. My dad always decorated our house and tree with them. I like the big, bright colors. And that they are wired in parallel. The roommate with whom I decorated the apartment hates those lights, though, so I'll save them until I have a place of my own. She did, after all, supply the 8' tree (she decided to go artificial). We probably have 100 ornaments on the tree, 97 of which are mine. :^) I have about 25 ornaments that I have been gathering for years- souvenir
    • Ah tinsel and kitties. Fond fond memories of growing up watching my dad running around the house trying to catch our cat who was running around with a turd stuck on some tinsel hanging out of his butt. All he was missing was a little "Just Married" sign hanging off of his tail.
  • I never set up a tree in my apartment because there isn't much room and no one else would see it anyway. I don't decorate my apartment.

    Besides, I spend the holidays at the parents'. They always get a tree but I haven't been there to put it up in... eight years? I was/am either at school or away at work so they and my brother do it. Of course they then take it down on the first of January every year... which I'm always around for (and my brother is, mysteriously, not). So I always get to pull off the ga
  • Yes! I'm sorry I neglected to reply, but yes, I am definitely interested in the holiday festiv-i-tation! Count me in!

    Wow, I hadn't actually managed to make any plans for then, so that's *goomba*!
    • Hooray(itlan)!!!!

      Pancake breakfast= approximately when we get up, which will be approximately when y'all show up.

      Stockings will be there at the crack of dawn, and you're welcome to contribute to them, i'll go over with you what portions i've got to put in them. Stuff in the stockings is all the same and all from santa claus, where i'm from, so you get 5 portions of a thing in 5 different colours or whatever, including the one for your own stocking. Everybody co-ordinates to cover the basics and the rest is
  • It seems that we believe in the opposite philosophy of tree decorating. At the tree at home, we somehow manage to put... I would estimate (11 boxes of ornaments x 45 ornaments per box) 495 ornaments on the tree giving it the extremely crowded look. Literally we run out of branches by the end and hang multiple ornaments on the same one. And as for being pretty and stuff you'd want to pass on, most of it is crap. Like free M & M ornaments, or a ball of red pipecleaners I made, or the "Bombo and Waldo" car
  • When we were younger, my family always did the multicolored lights/ zillions of tacky ornamanets the children have made over the years thing. Then, all the kids moved out and my mother let out her inner Martha Stewart. Now her trees look like this: http://www.royb.org/~pezstar/tree1.JPG [royb.org] Note: The whole house looks like that. It's the kind of place in which you are afraid to touch anything.
  • was decorated with ornaments that were collected over time. Each one has a story, either handmade or purchased in a specific location (on my choir tours overseas) or by a special person. Colored lights, but no tinsel for the same reason you give.

    I haven't had any trees in the last couple of years, but BBB is adamant that we can only have a living tree or a fake one. We will *not* kill a tree for our enjoyment. (It's a small compromise. To get the pine smell, I'll buy a swag or wreath) Once we get prop

    • I have my miniature Christmas tree. I can pull it out of the box (or you can if you would like) and we can be all merry and stuff.

      I might, however, suggest that we hang the tree piñata style from the ceiling so the cats don't decide to have their way with it.
  • Actually haven't done a tree at my house in several years. Back when I used to for my kids, I had either one of those small potted trees you could plant after the season ended or an artificial tree (that one's been sitting in storage and I really need to donate it so it can be enjoyed). I was raised a Jehovah's Witness, so I only tend to celebrate Christmas as a social function and out of respect for the other half of the family. (Plus I really appreciate the pagan background - a welcome back to the sun
  • What with me being whatever-it-is-I-am (current status: Deism with a crunchy Zen topping), and MrsZer being Jewish, we ARE gonna have one heck of a menorah.

    My parents, on the other hand, are whack. Round about 1988 they built a new house with cathedral ceilings in the living room, and my mom loves her Christmas decorating...

    So they end up with a tastefully-overdecorated 12'-14' tree. She has three sets of ornaments she alternates--the "passed down heirlooms and child-crafts" set, the overbearingly purple
    • heh. We don't do menorahs any more. But i have no shortage of households i can go to with them.

      Could you post pics of some of the beadwork, or send pics to me? I have more than a passing interest...

Slashdot Top Deals

"In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with the current." -- Thomas Jefferson

Close