Last year I wanted to decorate for Christmas before Halloween but waited. People kept telling me… “It is too early!” “Wait for Thanksgiving.” “Wait for December!” Well, by time December rolled around I was too busy. When I finally had the time – Christmas was less than a week away. Oh look, deja vu…
When I pulled the tree down from the garage a few weeks ago there was a small problem. The heat over the summer caused some discoloration on the tree – instead of white, it was spotted with cream and brown. It looked awful! I considered my options. Part of me wanted to go buy a new tree. Like the shiny, sparkly, silver tree of my dreams. Two years ago, I looked but couldn’t find one under 6ft, so I compromised with the 3.5ft “white” tree. My other concern was flammability. Was the tree material compromised by the heat? Would it go up in flames?
I got to thinking and came up with a great solution! Spray paint. I covered the lights and went to work. After the first coat it dawned on me that I was an idiot. Spray paint? At the very least, I was adding more reason to be concerned about flammability. Smaaaart.
Testing my theory was in order. After the last coat of paint, I let it dry for a few days then plugged it in and sat to watch for smoke. It turns out that my spray paint solution hasn’t resulted in a fire. Small miracles, people. I ended up decorating with everything but my handmade ornaments. I still don’t trust the tree…
And for the amount of time it took to put the tape over the lights, paint the tree then take the tape off… Ugh. Painter’s tape doesn’t stay stuck to a lot of stuff but it sure sticks to itself. All to save a $15-$20 dollar tree. But it won’t end up in the landfill!
The other day I realized that the tree is decorated almost exclusively in dollar bin merchandise. Thank you Target and Joann’s for your bins of $1 “stuff”. If you don’t include the hand-knit garland, I’ve accumulated it over the last two years for $15 dollars. Not too shabby! The glitter ornaments are in Target’s dollar section this year and the bow ornaments are $3 in the mini tree section. I couldn’t resist! Though I guess I’ll have to remove a few to make room for the handmade ornaments.
NaBloPoMo is officially over so I will be taking the opportunity to take it easy. And it is good timing since there are only two weeks left in my semester. December 18th cannot come soon enough! I appreciate those of you who have put up with my excessive posting this last month! Thank you for reading and all of your comments!
