Now It is Time to Decorate the SHOP!

Three days spent decorating a Christmas Tree for the Christmas Tree Festival, some really sore knees and joints not to mention neck muscles and well it is finally time to concentrate on the shop! Whew! I am a notorious "piece of cake" person. Dan and I remodeled a bathroom in our house in California. We had watched a wonderful remodeling show on NPR and it only took them a little over a 1/2 hour to do the bath... and it was big and needed a new tub! Ours didn't need the tub and was tiny! "Piece of Cake!" Three weeks later we finally finished it and have I mentioned the mosaic wall in my current bathroom? Well we wont go there! Anyway, I came up with this great idea to save money on the garlands that go on the trees and make mine kind of fun and bright and really different and much cheaper!!! UM hmmm. Well it only took 8 hours of making curly cue ribbon pompoms... for the end of each of the limbs on the tree...

Mary only spent another 10 or so hours making 100 little stars, I painted 30 additional ornaments and then made the "head dress" for the top of the tree that only took three weeks to paint and finish and well I estimate I saved maybe $50.00.

The theme of the tree was based on Clement Moore's "The Night Before Christmas". The top of the tree was supposed to represent night with stars and snowflakes. (That is why it is white and blues.) The bottom was supposed to represent Christmas morning when the presents were all passed out and the reindeer were resting. It was fun to do the theme and probably would have looked better had I not chickened out on my original thought... I had originally intended for there to be a blue garland wrapped around the center of the tree to make the top of the tree kind of dark... We later thought of blue light bulbs for the night part but... that was after I had delivered the tree to the new owners.

So anyway, after all that work the Big Brother and Sisters managed to make $1650 on the tree. $650 from the new owners and $1000 from Whidbey Telephone Company that sponsored the tree. Not to mention that Rockhoppers was the sponsor for the donations and contributed $400 to that effort! So not bad for the first time HUH? Here are a couple more pics of the tree.

Christmas tree festival on Whidbey Island