inspiration!

Yesterday, I mentioned that it generally takes me a long time to get inspired for Christmas and that this year was proving to be no exception. Well, last night I received the ornaments that I ordered from Angela at Cut N Glue (aka Pickles on Pizza) and that boosted my holiday mood! Here they are:

 

In the past, I have decorated our tree in a variety of ways. Some years I was in a very matchy-matchy mood and everything on the tree had to be the same (or one of two) colors. Other years, I've just thrown it all up together.

This year, it just so happened that I needed to trim the tree AND find a project to blog about and suddenly it hit me - BLOG ABOUT TRIMMING THE TREE. Yes, I am a little slow sometimes, but I get there eventually, I promise.

So, this morning, I was at ARC looking for canning jars when I decided to swing through the Christmas section to search for inspiration. Just as I was cursing the decision to bag up the ornaments in seemingly random fashion so that it's impossible to tell what you are buying, I realized how fun it would be to decorate the tree with all second hand finds (well, except for Angela's ornaments, of course). And not just that, but to add some mystery to it and use mainly what comes from grab bags. I chose six bags:

And here's what came out of them (I couldn't fit it all into one picture, so here are a few):

There's a range from cute to funky to just strange. Exhibit A, a Christmas....dragon??

A fuzzy plastic candy cane....chicken??

The little known Christmas spoon?

And, my favorite, the elusive one eyed Christmas mouse. Don't laugh - he once killed a man just to watch him die :)

And no Christmas would be complete without Garfield. Of course.

Or a glitzy disco ball ornament shaped like Saturn:



I'm not sure what these little guys are, but they are cute:

And the best part? For all that stuff plus the balls and garland that I didn't show, I only spent $9.50! Woohoo!

Tomorrow I will post pictures of the decorated tree in all its full glory.

Happy hunting!