New Tradition

I broke my own cardinal rule.

Yup. That's my Christmas tree. It's up. It's up before Thanksgiving, and heck, since I'm being honest, it was up before Halloween. It's blasphemy. And yet, it's amazing. It's amazing because this Christmas tree represents Thanksgiving, too! It's the best of two worlds. I plotted, planned, crafted, and spent a lot of money, and it turned out better than I imagined.

The pictures don't do it justice, truly, but I'm going to post some anyway.

Now, I mentioned that I had to get a little crafty for this tree. I spent the better part of a Sunday, filling empty, glass ornaments with paint and shaking the paint around until my forearms were so tired, and then I carefully propped them up and let them dry over night. I spent the next evening carefully arranging them in my tree. The thing that really drew me to these particular ornaments, besides the fact that they are the perfect shades of harvest colors, was the opaque look. I loved it. I found the idea on Pinterest.com, and I wanted to recreate it, and after 24 hours, I thought I had.

Alas. While I thought I let the paint dry completely, it turns out I didn't. I came home from work the next day, and found that the majority of my balls had paint settled in the bottom or on the sides, and they were very, very non-opaque.

It was pretty disappointing.

So my ornaments aren't perfect. At the end of the season, before I pack up my tree, I'll repaint the insides and give them days and days to dry so that I am certain of getting my opaque ornaments for next year. Because this is my new tradition. A Thanksgiving-Christmas tree. I love the harvest color palette. I love the fact that Thanksgiving is being recognized beyond Thanksgiving weekend. And I love the fact there are turkeys on my tree. And leaves. And acorns.

I wish you could see it in person. I really am very pleased with it.