resonant | My tree: let me show you it. (Reply)

tofty put up photos of her tree, and I thought: I have a digital camera! I could do that!

The kidlet put it up mostly, so the lights aren't shoved to the inside the way I like them, but, hey! I didn't have to put up the tree. I thought the kitten would be poking his head out at eye level by now, but so far all he's done is knock the lower ornaments off. You can see a bit of the tree skirt I made ten years ago, which I'm very proud of; it's two different plaid flannels, reversible, and I put it together without a pattern. And then the year the kidlet was born, I packed it away in some totally random place and didn't find it again until last year. (I lost an early-model digital camera and my favorite black shoes the same way. I had some kind of packrat thing going on postpartum; I don't get it.)

My crescent-moon topper. Three things I really like on a tree: birds, moons, and cats.

The Tech Goddess got me the Data ornament. She knows me well.

To the left is a brown-paper thing you can't really see very well, but it's probably the funniest ornament on the entire tree. The kidlet made it for the cat when they were about four, and so it's a dead mouse; it's lying on its back, it has little X's for eyes. And they weren't sure the cat would be able to tell the mouse was dead, see, so they very helpfully wrote DED on the back of it.

We have a few of these, left over from the spouse's childhood. We grew up in the late sixties and early seventies, the Years of the Pastel Christmas. These reindeer are covered with glitter and they look edible.

I'm a repository for family ornaments. This winter one of my aunts downsized her tree and sent me an entire box of cat ornaments. This is my favorite.

My former English teacher and next-door neighbor used to give us a literature-themed painted wooden ornament every year, and my parents passed them all on to me a couple of years ago. Here's Bottom; we've also got Alice and Tiny Tim and Mary Poppins.

My favorite aunt gave me a box of ornaments before she died, including a string of lights with these little cherubs attached; the lights poked in between the wings in back. Obviously tree lights from the fifties aren't very safe, but I did manage to salvage a few of the cherubs, though I can't get them to stay on any of our lights.

There's no story behind the mouse musicians. I ordered them from a catalog. But I love them so.

So! Now you! Show me your tree!

edited 2020 to retroactively correct the kidlet's gender pronouns