There's nothing wrong with orange and purple

So. Christmas.

Bleah.

It's so much work. Trying to figure out when to visit everyone and how you're going to get there. It's stressful and tiring and I have to use good vacation days for this??

Nowadays I go home, to an already decorated house, with 90% of the gifts under the tree for other people and it doesn't feel like Christmas. This year I decided I wanted to change this.

First step: Tree!!

Jer and I decided in December we'd go out and buy an artificial tree, and decorate it with purple and orange decorations - our favourite colours. Does orange and purple not sound Christmasy to you? no? Well, apparently stores in general agree with you. We had one idea to make orange and purple presents as ornaments, so all we needed was purple and orange wrapping paper and some ribbon. Even that seemed impossible.

With some luck, we found a few orange and purple ball ornaments, but couldn't find any wrapping paper. There's orange bristol board, but of course no purple bristol board. Then, something in my head clicked, and I knew what we could use: file folders. Work had purple ones! So we 'borrowed' purple file folders, bought orange bristolboard and then found ribbon at a craft store.

Cutting, folding, and assembling a dozen little boxes each? Words can't describe the frustration, boredom, and despair that ensued. With some pep talk (and whining) we managed to fight through it get it done. Afterward we were pooped. We saved putting the ribbon on for another day.

So we had gathered enough ornaments to decorate our tree, but was it really going to look good? We're talking fluorescent orange bristol board here, with a metallic orange. The purples clashed just as much. I was hopeful, but prepared to love a tacky/ugly tree. It came together rather quickly, we flipped on the lights, and wow. It worked! It looks like a real tree! *happiness*

Later this week I'll conclude with Christmas Phase 3. Ha, I bet you weren't expecting five Christmas posts. Oh snap.