My Christmas tree theme for 2022 is Ancient Egypt! As usual, everything is made by me using bits and scraps from around the house. 🙂 I hope everyone has a great new year and a wonderful holiday season.

My Christmas tree theme for 2021.

This year’s Christmas tree theme! I hope it’s kinda obvious that it’s Ghostbusters. :P Everything was completely handmade using shrink plastic, scrap felt, old shirt boxes, and a lot of hot glue. There’s a few iconic landmarks from the movie, and of course Stay Puft attacking New York! :D

Here are some “process” photos of how I put together the tiki themed Christmas tree. The photos are captioned. The only things I had to actually buy where the LED lights and crepe paper to make the flowers. Everything else I had on hand! Total cost was about $20.

My Christmas tree theme this year is Game of Thrones! Everything I handmade using mostly stuff I had on hand. The “dragon eggs” are actually emu egg shells I’ve had for years that I tinted the appropriate colors. I sculpted Jon Snow’s sword out of cheap air-dry clay (same with the Hand of the King pin). The Iron Throne is made out of cardboard and craft foam. Completed with a garland of construction paper ravens circling the tree! :D

Turns out this disposable plastic wine glass makes a nifty little cloche.

The tree is finally up. Undecorated. But I am busy creating this year’s decorating theme! Stay tuned…

Hey look, I’m not dead! Also, I wanted to hand out a tip (that none of you actually want, I’m sure) about shopping at thrift stores for stuff that costs way too much brand new. Like stainless steel cookware. It’s almost indestructible, so even the dirtiest pot will clean up like new. Every time I’m out running errands I pop into a thrift store (I pass at least three everywhere I go) and look for a few key items, stainless steel being one. If I walk out empty handed, that’s fine. The hunt is half the fun! The other day I hit pay dirt though, and found this 6 quart pot with lid, pasta insert, and steamer basket for just $8!

My office / art studio / guest room is really tiny and in order to save space I built this modular wall-mounted computer desk. It works great, but the major drawback is that there are no drawers in which to stash pens and rulers and the usual desk stuff that I need access to every once in a while. So I made a box to stash that stuff in that looks like some books sitting on the shelf above my monitor! (captioned photos)

This one is going in the tiki room! (I can hide those repairs with some paint)

One of the reasons I love shopping at thrift stores is finding awesome/weird stuff for stupid-cheap, like this print I found yesterday!