My Grandma Rocks & A Wonderful Wonderland Tree

Merry Christmas, bots! I thought I'd share a little happy nostalgia with you today, plus some Wonderland eye candy.

This Story from last week jogged a lot of memories out there; I got so many great messages! How many of you have relatives who made/make beaded ornaments like this?

I'm also getting requests for a tutorial - so Grandma, when you read this, have Uncle Russ film you making one for us, K? :)

Grandma is my only living grandparent, and I just want to thank every one of you who messaged to encourage me to call her more often, and to never take her for granted. I'm going to try, I promise. (Also giant squishy internet hugs to those of you missing your grandparents and parents today.)


This year I tried not to buy anything new for Christmas: I wanted a low-key, low-cost holiday using stuff we already had, and maybe crafting a few new things for fun. This is our first Christmas with the new Wonderland room, though, and while we had a little 3 foot tree for the table, I didn't have anything to put on it:

 
This was a fun challenge, and let me tell ya: $3 at the Dollar Tree goes a long way. I grabbed 2 garlands of red tinsel and a deck of playing cards, and just those filled the tree most of the way:

I used the rabbit ears from John's Birthday Hop last month as a topper, then hot glued some of the playing cards into long fans and tucked them into the branches. I used other cards to make little flowers:

These are actually mistakes; I was *trying* to make this flower on Instructables, but botched it pretty badly, ha. Once I realized the petals could work in single layers like this, though, I glued some plastic rhinestones in and called it a day.

My grandmother's ornaments were the finishing touches: I decided her light blue one would be the "Alice" ornament, and added a little print out of Alice falling through the tree to make it more obvious:

Then her red and white ornament is tucked up top.

It's seriously so much fun finding low-cost ways to decorate trees. Later I'll try to remember to show you my friend Karen's tree, which we decorated with just what we could find in her craft room!

This little vignette is like a cozy Christmas postcard to me; I get a little giddy every time I see it. Plus I'm still in love with my barrel chairs; they're just so comfy. John and I sit in here all the time to talk.

 Oh hey, so many of you liked our new resident flamingo, I think you'll appreciate his new hat:

I still have lots more decorations I want to show you; our actual full-size trees plus some random silly stuff - so I'll try to round that all up into a photo post in the next week or so.  I meant it when I said we were extending Christmas this year, so if you're feeling like you missed out or didn't have enough time to do all the holiday things you wanted to this year, then please, join me! Go ahead, rock that ugly Christmas sweater, watch Home Alone, bake the cookies, and heck yeah, hang some twinkle lights or put up a tree to decorate. It's not too late, and you don't need anyone's permission but your own to let loose and celebrate anyway you like.

There are actually a few things I'm a little sad we didn't do yet this year, so in writing this post, I've just convinced myself it's not too late. And just choosing to believe that I didn't miss my chance, that there's still time to do that nice thing for that person, to make that call, to send that card or bring over those cookies to the neighbors - that's honestly the best gift I could ask for today. No regrets, y'all; we've still got time. So rest up, be kind to yourselves and others, and have yourself a merry little rest-of-2020.

::mwah::