The Christmas I Sold My Soul to Bimart for $79.99

Christmas is, without a doubt, the most wonderful time of the year. Today, I got to use the leafblower indoors (more on that momentarily) and salvage fresh cypress greens (with berries!!) from a fallen tree across the street.

We had some wet, heavy snow last night and awoke to this festive scene...

The snow took out some branches across the street (only one at our house) and I put on my sweet waterproof Sorels to go splash through three inches of slush and drag a few armloads of wet branches back to the garage. Waterproof footwear makes me feel like I have superpowers. I should maybe shoot higher for my superpower abilities, but it's really pretty great walking through slush and puddles with dry feet.

Yesterday, I acquired not one but free two large birch logs from a Christmas tree lot that we didn't even buy a tree from! (Not pictured...yet.) Best time of the year.

This shall also forever be known as the year that I sold out and bought a fake tree, and then spent the last 24 hours since that purchase wondering why it took me so long to actually do it. I have pine cubes for my wax warmer and a fake tree, and it is fantastic. It's one of those "real feel" ones and looks pretty solid, even to my rather particular eye.

Ok, so, the freshly scavenged greens. I made this ...trough... from scrap wood a couple of years ago when we lived in Bend. Thought it'd look nice on the dining room table as a centerpiece, and (bonus) it smells good too. Which is perfect, because it helps sneak the fake tree by.

 LOOK at all these berries! So festive. If it was any more festive, nobody could handle it. It will not be residing on the kitchen counter all season. That was just to make sure it wasn't leaking.

But here at Casa McShoe, it's about to get EVEN MORE FESTIVE. You may recall me earlier in the post stating that I had occasion to use the leafblower inside. Technically it was sort of inside, with the blowy end pointed out the front door. We have a real tree sitting in a holder on the front porch, drying off so it could come in. It was a bit soggy from the weather last night. So it's been sitting there all day as it rains, which means the air is not conducive to evaporation.

I began to wonder, is there a better way to get the tree dry? Yes, yes, there is. It is sitting in my garage right now. And as I stood in my doorway at dusk as the neighbor walked by, staring at me as I blew dead needles and water everywhere, I thought to myself, is there a more fun way to get the tree dry? And we all know the answer to this: no, there definitely is not. So we will be decorating our dry Christmas tree in short order.

But wait, there's still more Christmas!

Normally I am not terribly into displaying random stuff on top of cabinets in kitchens. Or any stuff. But it's Christmas and I just bought a fake tree, so there are no rules anymore.

 There's even kitchy americana, which is normally strictly prohibited.

 Oh, look, more fragrant and festive fresh greens.

 Here's the rest of the kitchen, btw. Picture rail is finished and all but one piece of art is in place, though it's seasonally rearranged to accommodate the snowy pine swag thing on the right. I looove it.

 Here's a close-up on the arrangement on the table. I think it still needs a little work. Kind of heavy on the left and right, and it's reminding me a bit of Maleficent.

It's possible the resemblance is a little more in my head, but nonetheless, Maleficent is not very festive.

Wait, did another picture of my fake tree sneak in here? Oh, well...

A little cheer here...(minus the dead plant. That was an experiment that didn't go as I'd hoped.)

A LOT of cheer there, and there isn't even a tree in there yet!

And lastly, this flannel ribbon that I am pretty jazzed to use on gifts (and then surreptitiously steal and take home to use again for next year when the receiver of the gift isn't watching. I am coming to accept that I might actually be an old lady.)

MERRY CHRISTMAS, YOU FILTHY ANIMALS!!

Update...

Here's the Christmas tree (the night before we took it down). It was a grand fir and it smelled amazing. 

 

Salvaged Wood Delivery

It's not every day that your contractor delivers a trailer full of wood for your salvaging, reclaiming, pilfering convenience. Or that he helps you pick through the wood (which was on its way to the dump in his trash trailer). I think he thinks I'm crazy, though he did note that replacing this redwood deck cost over $400 in lumber, which means I hit the jackpot: A ton of 2x6 redwood that's mostly in pretty good and perfectly weathered condition.

 Also salvaged the same weekend from a local lumber yard (where I know the guy on duty did think I was nuts for fishing out scraps and asking how much they were). I think he felt sorry for me on account of my evident mental instability and gave them to me for free. That piece of true 4x4 is for my kitchen table (currently in development).

 He saw scrap lumber, I saw lamps. Potentially very bug-infested lamps, so Todd bug bombed them in the pool shack to ensure no creepy-crawlies came to make their home in my guest room. The texture on these is super rough and really awesome.

 I've made it as far as removing a ton of old rusty nails and screws from the wood and giving it a good scrubbing to remove loose dirt, moss and other substances of which I have no need to know the nature.

 One other suuuuper exciting thing about the above picture: SAWHORSES!! I bought some folding aluminum sawhorses at Lowe's a few weeks ago and LOVE them. I'd been needing sawhorses for a long time and decided that this was a good time to make the investment of $34, knowing there was a lot of baseboard painting in my near future. It was a good call.

Hardware and cherries

Trash dresser's cousin got hardware installed last weekend, and I love it.

 It's kind of a blocky, modernish shape. Dark finish. The best part is opening and closing drawers and how much easier it is with a handle. Also, lesson learned, when you're filling holes in furniture, use wood filler and not caulk. Four coats of caulk in and the holes from the previous hardware were still visible. Wood filler dealt with them in one swipe.

Todd's dad came and tilled the weed forest garden a couple weeks ago too. We planted annual rye grass in the non-bedded section and won't be growing much this year, other than a few determined dahlias that sprouted again after two years of not being dug up and split. Five tomato plants are in the bed and two basils are in the back entry waiting to be planted. 

 You remember our plumbing project? And how I said our pipes were made of concrete? Welp, that's one of the pipes. You know what pipes aren't supposed to have? HOLES. That is like Swiss cheese pipe. Glad this project is drawing to a close.

 This is from Friday night at the farm/winery just up the street from our house. 7 minute walk, perhaps. I will be probably blabbing more about them in the coming weeks. Perfect place to spend a Friday evening.

 Our first round of fruit ripened earlier this week: the cherries. It was a lot of work keeping the birds out of my cherry trees this year, but mission accomplished. We netted the trees and then I put some stuffed animals out (rabbit, lobster and bear) to deter would-be thieving birds from making off with the goods.

 Of which there were many. Last year I saw the green cherries, and then a few weeks later went out to check on them and there was no trace of any cherries at all. I was later told that birds will clear the tree within a day if certain measures aren't taken to fend them off. This year, said measures were taken and we filled two huge mixing bowls with our spoils, and they are yummy.

 Sadly, we lost one of the apple trees (Todd's Red Delicious) from last year. Kind of weird because they should have been established, but anyway... My Macintosh has a pretty lot of apples on it, which is the first year we'll be getting fruit from it. Only one of the peaches has peachlets on it right now, but one tree full of peaches is better than zero trees full of peaches, so I'll take it.