Christmas Maker
I love to make things. If you met me for 10 minutes it is likely one of my many hobbies or my love of making things has come up. Over the holidays I get to have some fun with what I make.
There is some debate in our household on if Die Hard is a Christmas Movie. Here is my argument.
It is set at a Christmas party.
Christmas carols are a part of the soundtrack (thank you Run-DMC)
We have an ornament on the tree.
When we travel we always pick up ornaments for the tree. It lets us reminisce as we put up the tree discussing trips and the people that gave us the various ornaments. On our recent trip to England I wanted to find a Cornish pasty ornament. It appears that August isn’t really ornament time in south west England so when we got back I carved my own.
Both my wife and daughter are musical so a theme on our Christmas tree is the orchestra. There is a long story behind this ornament involving my wife, her own band and a wild story told in the back of a cab. Every year I get a giggle when I put up the double neck guitar ornament.
Our tree is unabashedly artificial. Sure we lose the smell of a natural tree but it is so much easier to light, we don’t have to water or have a dried out roman candle in our house while we are away. To make the tree feel a bit more real I carved a tree spirit. They are traditionally carved in the trunks of trees out in the woods. For our artificial tree it carved in Basswood and there are imbedded magnets to hold it to the tree. I really think this should be a thing for everyone’s tree. It is a secret ornament that you can burry and only the truly observant can find.
Photographing inside a tree is harder than you would think.
Now the fun with the tree is that every year when I add a new one I don’t tell the family. I like to see how long it takes for the addition to be found. It usually takes a while and I normally have to point it out. The tree spirit needed to be pointed directly at.