Winter Trees

This post may seem a little late, but I'm a fan of winter time decorations, not just stuff that I have to take down after Christmas or else it will look out of place.  Although I will readily admit that my tiny fake Christmas tree is still proudly displayed by our window.  What?  It's festive and happy looking!  You can never get enough of that here in the gloomy days of winter.

I've been seeing all these cute ornament trees on the interwebs and wanted something similar for myself.  The only problem is that those ornaments are usually breakable, and breakable doesn't fly well in this household.  I swear, we're not going to have to do anything to baby proof the house when we have kids after all of the animal proofing we've done.

Back to non-breakable stuff.  Right around Christmas I was in Michael's and saw they had beaded garland on super clearance; I think it was 80¢ for a 6' length or something like that.  The idea popped in my head that I could use this to decorate the trees; it's shiny and not breakable, which were basically my only requirements. 

I snagged a handful of the garland in silver and green, picked up 3 different size styrofoam cones (paper mache would be better but they didn't have any at this store and I was all excited to get started) and made my way to the register.

I started by covering the cones with paper using Mod Podge to give myself a better surface to adhere things to and to make the tops a little taller and pointier.

After that dried I painted them silver since you would be able to see some spaces between the beads.

When that dried I busted out my hot glue gun and got to work.  I started at the bottom and worked my way around and up.  I recommend putting a strip of hot glue and then sticking on the beads for the entire thing.  I tried to do a short cut on my smallest tree and only glue the strands on one side of the cone and it turned out a little wonky and didn't feel very sturdy afterward.  I made sure each bead was glued down on the bigger trees and it turned out much neater and feels very solid.  Later I filled in the gaps on the smaller tree with hot glue to make sure everything was held in place.

So that's it!  My shiny winter trees in pretty winter colors.

Captains of the Sky

For Christmas this year my brother got Lenny and Waldo pretty much the best present ever.  I mean really, what does every kitty dream of being when he grows up?

A fighter pilot!  Obviously.

Eric got them their very own fighter plane.  We put it together and it.is.awesome.  It was really easy to build; it all fit together into itself so we didn't need any glue, tape, staples or anything like that.

Behold!

Thomas starting the propellor before take-off 

Peeking out the bottom hatch

There's.....something on the wing...some...thing...

Waldo is always very cautious around new things and had to give the plane a good inspection 

Then he decided it was safe to check out the inside

But that's as far as he went for the day.  I think once he figures out what an awesome hiding spot it is he'll be hanging out in there all the time.

 For now he's content just hanging out near their airplane

This is seriously a super cool plane.  The attention to detail on it is amazing, too.  Every inch of the plane!  The outside has the airplane pattern on it, with things like CATS R GR8, FLYING KITTEN, and 9 LIVES written on it.  And the inside looks like the interior of a fighter plane with little controls and everything!

Thanks, Eric!  The kitties love their new hangout and say you're the coolest uncle ever.  Lots of snuggles coming your way from Lenny, and to a lesser extent, Waldo.

If your cats are insanely jealous, and why wouldn't they be, you can get them their very own fighter plane (or tank or fire engine or car) from this very cool website.

Happy Holidays!

Since we have a new member in the family this year it was time for another photo holiday card.  I think we all know that these can be a little cheesy at times, so we decided to just go with it.  We got reindeer antlers for everyone in the family and I picked up some snowflake decorations at the dollar store for a more scenic backdrop.

Obviously, getting all three critters to cooperate for a picture would be hard enough, but while also wearing funny little hats was going to be quite the challenge.  We knew a timer wasn't going to cut it for this, so we asked our friend Blake to come over and help us.

I moved all of our bedroom furniture to one side to clear a space so we could have a blue background and then taped up the snowflakes.  First we put our antlers on since we knew that once the animals were wearing them we wouldn't have any free hands.  Then Dash got his since he usually forgets that he's wearing things like this after a few minutes.  Next was Lenny; although he's certainly not a fan of any outfit, overall he's pretty cooperative.  Waldo was last and the toughest, so we made sure everyone else was ready before he got dressed.  Then I found where Waldo was hiding, plopped him on the bed, put his antlers on and rushed into our room since we knew he wouldn't tolerate this cruelty for long.

Blake snapped away as we tried to keep all three animals in the frame and looking the right direction.  Luckily he was able to get some good shots before Waldo made his exit.

So without further ado, I present to you our holiday card picture for 2010:

And of course, a few of the pictures that didn't quite make the cut:

Earlier in the day we took Dash to the dog park and afterward when he was passed out on his bed I couldn't resist putting his antlers on him.

And a million thanks to Blake, we couldn't have done this without you!