Category: Christmas

Earlier this fall I had gone to Lincoln, Nebraska, with my love.  (Seriously — saying “boyfriend” makes me sound like I’m 12.) We were at his sister’s house and she took us out to the garage where she had boxes and boxes of “stuff” from her dad’s estate.  We opened up the boxes and started sifting through it all, and I was having a great time looking at some of the old cards, pictures, relics, awards, stationery, etc.  Most people digging through the stuff would pull out something and go, “Meh,” and toss it aside, and I’d snatch it up and marvel at it.  Yeah … I’m weird like that.  I kept saying over and over, “We need to scan this stuff in!”  It kills me to throw away pictures, no matter how obscure they are.

I found a stack of pictures stuffed in an old sock box.  There’s something you don’t see anymore — sock boxes from a department store.  Anyway, I started leafing through the pictures and I came across an old photo Christmas card.  The styling of it was so incredibly retro and unique that I made sure it went into the “scan” pile that my love and I were taking back home with us.  I knew just what I would do with it, too.  It was going to be scanned in and edited to become this year’s Christmas card.

So I took it home, scanned it in, cut out the original photo on it, and replaced it with a pic I took of my kids earlier this fall.  I couldn’t find a photo printer who would allow me to just print the photo card without having an additional design on it (OK, I did see that Apple would allow me to do it, but each card would be 99 cents!).  I ended up just printing them as a regular 4×6 picture.  I’ll write on the backs for personalization and will stick them in a regular envelope for sending out.  I think it all turned out pretty neat, and I can be sure that my cards will not look like anyone else’s cards this year.  That’s just the way I like it.

Here’s a copy of the “doctored” photo card — included here for your own use, if you’d like to use it for your own cards.  I’ve uploaded the full size here for download.

After my last post, I just could not get the image of my imaginary retro tree out of my mind.  So I started searching the ‘net for either a silver tinsel tree or a white one.  In the end, I abandoned the idea of a silver tinsel tree because I knew I wanted to add shiny ornaments to the tree, and that would all be a bit . . . much.  Even for me.  So I concentrated on white and looked around.

And looked and looked some more.  Sheesh!  I only wanted to spend, like, fifty bucks on this tree, since I had planned it to be a second tree in our house – one on which I could play around with decorations, etc.   Needless to say, nearly everything I encountered was well over a hundred and almost everything is prelit.  I didn’t want a prelit tree because I wanted to be able to change the lights around if I wanted to.  Don’t force me to have white lights, people!

Obviously, this retro tree chase was not going to be easy.

Then last weekend I was visiting my sister in Minnesota, and we decided to take a quick trip to a certain superstore that begins with W.  While we were there, I said I wanted to check out the Christmas trees to see if they had any unadvertised white ones that were within my budget.

And there, stacked alongside the green trees, was a simple little box containing a 6.5-foot white tree.  Unlit.  $40.

I tried not to do a little happy dance as I snatched it up.  Next stop: ornaments.

It was getting harder and harder NOT to do a happy dance as I saw what the ornament aisle held for me: sparkly starburst ornaments . . . for a dollar.  ONE FREAKING DOLLAR!  I found the silver ones and tried not to feel piggish while I snatched up every last one.  They had a whole slew of silver ornaments (and gold, and red, and green) so I grabbed some silver snowflakes as well.  I remembered I had blue, white, and silver ornaments from a couple years ago, so planned to use those to go with the blue and white lights that I purchased too.

Behold: my creation.

The ornament above was one I found last year in a dollar store.  Sadly, they only had three of them.  But hey, they go nicely with the dollar starburst ornaments:

. . . and the snowflake ones:

. . . and the blue, silver, and white ones:

And the white and blue lights look so pretty nestled among the white branches:

The best part, obviously, was the price.  In all, this creation probably ran me about $80 with the ornaments, lights, and tree topper.  And although it’s not quite from my favorite era (too 60’s-ish and not 50’s-ish enough), I am in love with it.  I can pretty much guarantee that my tree is unique.