Securing your tree...or "Watch it spin!"
So, back when I had the 14' tree...I was hosting a Christmas party with my ex. I had decorated the tree (almost 3 hours) the day before and was upstairs getting ready...my mom was in the guest room and my ex was in the bathroom.
I had secured the tree with wires to two pints on the wall (mistake #1), so I though all was well.
Then I heard the crash...I couldn't bear to look...then I heard my mom laughing.
The tree had shrunk just enough to pull itself off of the spike in the bottom of the stand. The weight of the ornaments made the top heavier than normal (although not top heavy) and it was enough to allow the tree trunk to shift the stand back, with the wires acting as a fulcrum.
Luckily, only a few plain glass balls broke. My mom was laughing at the other ornaments, which had been "flung" across the room by the torque of the tipping tree and had landed on the sofa. THe tree-topper (a large glass spike) had gone point first into the crevice between the cushions. My mom said that the ornaments looked like they had jumped for safety.
I had to finish getting the food ready, so she started redecorating the tree...in many cases just tossing the ornaments and leaving them where they landed.
The guests thought the tree was great...so I wasted 3 hours when I could have just throw the ornaments on the tree!
We still laugh about the tree where the ornaments jumped for their lives.....
:rofl2:
Pictures of the Christmas shrub, etc.
Yesterday, December 6th, was the Feast Day of St. Nicholas...time to put up the Christmas decorations.
So, as I will be away for the holiday, I did not want a dying tree in the house (my insurance agent thanks me....), so I did not go cut one this year or go buy a pre-cut (I saw some of them...crappy trees for $80+....wait...isn't the economy bad?). Instead, I bought a Norfolk pine about 4' tall and put it on a table in the dining room - very 19th century. I picked the best (and lightest) decorations to use, used the "candle" lights, beads, straw, paper, wooden ornaments. I put lighted garland and little fake trees in front to the house - minimal, no moving sculptures, very nice.
For those interested, there are also pictures of the "Krasnyj Ugol" (Beautiful Corner...krasnyj is ancient Russian for "beautiful"...and came to mean "red" as well) where the household icons/iconostasis are placed in my home. The icon infron of the tree is the Madonna "Derzhavnaya" (Bogoroditsa Derzhavnaya) and the one in the tree is a Madonna and Child from the Church of St. George in Madaba, Jordan.
Christmas 2008