Tag Archives: Christmas Tree

Bringing Home the Tree

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Yakira in the parking lot

My family has the tradition of going into the mountains to cut down our own Christmas tree. We like to go the Saturday after Thanksgiving. There wasn’t much snow down in the parking lot but it got deeper as we climbed the hill to our favorite area to find a tree. Yakira had a great time. She got a little cold when we got off the beaten path and the snow was deeper than her legs. I sat down on a log and picked her up, cuddling her inside my coat until she warmed up. Meanwhile Bill got our tree cut down and headed off to help Eric and Danny get their tree down the hill. Our tree is rather little because we put it up on a trunk. This keeps the tree from being too tempting to the puppies. But my sister’s house had 16′ ceilings in their living room so their tree is much bigger and is hard to get down the hill. I was really impressed by Yakira on our trek back down the hill with the tree. She just plugged her way along, keeping a steady pace until we got back to the car.

After the trees were all back to the cars we ate baked potatoes with chili, hot chocolate and other yummy treats. Yakira was very tired after her tromp through the snow and slept on the way home. She loves to put her chin in the notch in the folded up seat in the back of our station wagon.

Yakira sleeping in the back of the car

Candy Day 18

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Today (and the next week) was all about gluing on the green candy to cover the tree. I am cutting most of the candy in half but not down the middle to help the candy go farther and to make them different lengths. Hopefully this will give a more realistic look to the tree. After I had done a section, I decided that it needed something more so I decided to add a bunch of yellow sour balls. It was a bit of a pain to get them on in the area that I had already covered but I think it helps the tree look better and it should help the green candy stretch farther. I’m pretty sure I don’t really have enough but I’ll have to find a way to make it work. The back side probably doesn’t need to be glued as close together as the front side because it won’t be viewed as closely. I’ve calculated that if I get one side of the tree finished every two days I should finish the tree next Saturday. That will give me Monday to clean things up and get it transported over to the Gale Center.

Photos and Assembly

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Angel from photo shoot

Because I’d like to use this project to illustrate a children’s Christmas book, today I tried to get some decent photos of all the A to Z parts before I assemble the project together. I set up a white backdrop and a couple of extra lights to shoot the objects against. It was ok but not wonderful. I got out my heat gun and worked on getting all the hot glue strings off and then taking several shots of each object. This took and while and my camera battery was flashing red by the time I finished. I sure hope that the quality of the photos is good enough to make a cute children’s book.

Next step was to decide final placement for all the parts and pieces. I thought I might need all four sides of my tree but when it got right down to it two sides for the ornaments was more than enough. I really should have made the tree shorter. I pulled out a measuring tape today and the project is bigger than I had originally planned. It is almost 60″ tall instead of being 3 or 4 feet tall. I’m not really surprised but I should have thought through some of the implications before I let the project grow that tall. It takes a lot more candy and time when it is at least 12″ taller than needed. The back of the tree will still be finished but it won’t have any of the A to Z search items on it. It took some trial and error to get what felt like a good arrangement under the tree and on the tree. Than I attached all the ornaments to the tree. The items under the tree are not glued down yet.

Tree with ornaments and packages

After attaching all the ornaments I added a bunch of large red gum balls to help fill the tree up and to give it more color. For the most part I’m happy with how it is looking. I then started the last big step of the project, gluing all the green licorice pastilles to the tree.

Bringing Home the Tree

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My family has a tradition of cutting down our own Christmas tree. For the last several years we have gone out the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We had more snow than we have had for several years so the going was a bit tough. Casey totally loved it but it was too deep for Langley to handle for very long. He played with my nephews and their cousins and had a grand time. After cutting down our trees we have a “tail-gate” party with hot baked potatoes with all the fixings including chili, hot chocolate, hot cider and lots of other treats. The pups got a bit cold so they snuggled in the car while we snacked. I forgot to take my camera with me up the mountain so the photos are very slim, but we all had a grand time kicking off the Christmas season.