The Post Where I Show You My Balls…

And my "Space Needle"

And my other Christmas decoration, and then ask you to show me yours, too.  ;-)

Early disclaimers to get out of the way now…

• My birthday is December 22nd, and I love Christmas
• These pictures are carefully staged and cropped.  The condo is currently a toxic waste dump just off camera.
• Jan, the beautiful ornament that you sent kept washing out in the flash, and without the flash, it didn't show up too well, either.  :-(  But in person, it looks great.  :-)
• There's a whole lot of pictures in this here post.
• This is the first year I've ever done a tree.  Wreaths?  Yes.  Tree?  No.

Despite that fact that I am CURRENTLY a bachelor, living on his own, I do decorate for Christmas.  Always have.  In fact, number of years ago, I started giving out (and keeping) a different silver Christmas ornament each year as a package topper.

Crate & Barrel usually comes thru for me.  Like this year's silver Christmas tree, or last year's silver reindeer.

Speaking of my tree, here it is in all it's sparse, Charlie Brown-esque glory. I have done a little shopping and wrapping so far, but not a lot.  I am taking today (Thursday) off work to really go to town on finishing up the final bits of shopping, get some presents wrapped and in the mail, get my hair cut, etc.  Hopefully I will get that done.

"Why not take Friday off instead?"

Good question.  The answer is simple: Office Christmas party is Friday after work.  And that kicks off a weekend of celebrating and kicking back with some old friends (including the lovely and talented Gwen of Everything I Like Causes Cancer.)   She and Whiskey Marie will be in town, so I really don't plan on doing anything productive on Saturday or Sunday, so if it is going to happen, it needs to happen on Thursday.

But I promised you some balls, right?  I'm getting there.  I just had to ramble long enough to fill in the gap beside the picture.  Duh.

So here's my fireplace, and you can see that my balls are hung…

I have some hand painted glass ball ornaments that I got at a craft show.  Long boring story short, my parents had a booth at the show, and he was next to us, and didn't sell a damn thing all day, so I bought the snowman…

the Christmas trees…

and the constipated sun.

And speaking of hand painted ornaments, (not constipation) this guy, "Party Boy" is a P. Buckley Moss design that I bought at her museum a few years back.  It is hand painted on the inside of the glass!

Getting back to the tree, I have a bit of a travel theme going on.  Restoration Hardware used to sell these beautiful brass ornaments of icon structures and airplanes and such.  I bought many for places that I had been.

(Note, there's the starfish Jan from Struck by Serendipity sent me, it has glitter and shells, and is most charming.)  So to go with the Eifel Tower, Big Ben, Roman Coliseum, and the Golden Gate Bride (off camera), I wanted a Space Needle, for my heart currently lives in Seattle, and I wanted one on the tree.

But, I searched the internets, and all I saw were some cheesy looking glass ones.  So over Thanksgiving, Cora and I hunted and hunted for a nice, metallic one.  They had to have them, right?  This was the best we could find.

A cheap resin one.

But there's that story about beggars and choosers, so I bought it as a backup.  While at the festival of lights, I did buy this Borg sphere looking ornament, so that I would have a "nice" ornament to hang on the tree.  (In real life, it doesn't look like a big ball of tin foil, honest.)

On the way to the airport for my return flight, Cora and I stopped in at Wal-Mart of all places, and struck gold.  Well, bronze.  We found two different sized bronze Space Needle paper weights, that with a little ribbon or monofilament thread can become ornaments.

  To wrap up this monster post, and to get wrapping, I wouldn't want you to think that my decor is ALL fancy and sophisticated.Yes – The hat has sequins on it.
Yes – The nose blinks.

So, I've shown you mine, now you show me yours.  What do your decorations look like?