A Christmas Story

Around late November, I thought there wasn't much point in decorating for the holidays because we have a small apartment that's not ours, and to save money, we would not buy a Christmas tree. Instead, I decided on a substitute:
A home-made painted tree!

As the holidays approached, I started getting a bit "home sick" and really thinking this would be our first Christmas away from our families - our first at "home" (even though home will always be where our families are). So I scrapped the substitute idea and went on a wild hunt for a small though still fake) Christmas tree. I kept seeing these 3-feet trees on sale at our closest Canadian Tire, but after many trips desperately searching the aisles, I left empty handed. Even tried Sears - they had tons of little ones as decorations but none to sell (I was close to asking the register guy if I could have one of the decorations...). I tried CT again, and got the guts to ask if they had them in stock (hiding somewhere). After a no, I was determined and asked "What about the other store up north?" "Oh, the computer says they have 13". I bolted out to the train station! At the other CT, there was the usual mess by the Christmas section - opened boxes everywhere, but no little trees except one that was on display... and then - A box in the middle of the aisle on the floor! I still searched the aisles over and over again for where they were hiding. People even kept asking me "Oh, where did you find that one? That's the one I was looking for!". No luck, the only ones around were the box I had, the open display and another opened box by a sales computer. I took mine slightly out of the box to check the lights, which worked, but I could not get the tree back in the box. I thought of taking the one by the sales computer because I thought, "that's weird, it's a tree with a small concrete base? I guess it somehow goes inside the vase it comes with...?". Since I had already tested this one, I didn't want to risk it and finally paid and left. (Side note, as I was leaving, I saw someone with the display one - no box, she was just going to take it as is). When I got home, I was super excited and took it out of the box, only to realize the vase was broken! The concrete base - yeah that was suppose to stay glued to the vase... GGrrrr. If I had a car, I'd probably go back to the store and exchange it. But I didn't want to get back on the subway, knowing there may not be another one to substitute it with. So the Engineer in my got the tape out (didn't have krazy glue around) and put most of the big pieces back together. Crack part facing the wall, of course.

Now I needed decorations. Lately, I've been playing around with paint and bake-clay (I'll have to post why later), so I decided to make our own ornaments! Here's a sample:

Christmas-sy stuff, Snowman and white bunny (too lazy to paint it)
1-up!
We're in Canada now

Put everything together, and what do you get? A small cute tree in our living room and lots of excitement waiting to open gifts on Christmas morning!