One year I was looking at some great artsy tree ornaments and I got to thinking it would be fun to have a tree in the kitchen, and a non-traditional tree at that. Our kitchen is black and white with bold primary colors, and I wanted to match the mood of my cheery kitchen. One thing lead to another until I had a loose plan, then off to the hardware store I went, and with Jonathan's help, we constructed my Funky Christmas Tree. Ta-Da!
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| The Funky Christmas Tree! |
I made it several years ago, so I can't give you an illustrated tutorial, but if any of you are interested in how I put it together, here are enough directions to get you going. I took a two inch diameter, four feet long dowel and a bunch of pencil thickness dowels, too. I also picked up a round wooden plaque.
We drilled a hole through the base and a hole up into the trunk. Then using a bolt we attached the "trunk" to the base. Jonathan drilled some of the bottom of the base out so it could stand flat on the floor. I painted the whole thing white.
We cut the pencil dowels into pieces, seven sets of four each in sizes ranging from 3.5" to 10". I wrapped them in cheap green tinsel tree garland, securing the end of the garland to the end of the dowel with a green thumbtack. The thumbtack also gave a nice finished look to the end of each "branch."
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| Thumbtacks finish the ends off neatly |
We drilled holes in the big dowel, then glued and pushed the pencil sized dowel pieces into the holes. The glue in the hole held the garland in place on the branches, too.
Next we took two rope lights, one red and one white, and secured them to the top of the dowel with duct tape, then we wrapped them tightly around the trunk, going around the spots where the branches came out. The rope lights actually helped the dowel branches stay in place. We kept wrapping until there was just the cords down at the bottom. They did not reach the base. We then took a short extension cord and plugged in the two ends. We drilled another hole in the plaque, near the trunk, to feed the extension cord through. Then Jonathan routed out a groove under the plaque so the cord didn't make the plaque tip. I think instead of routing the groove, though, you could put little feet under the plaque so it would stand above the floor enough to let the cord come out freely. Or you could just let the cord come out on top of the base. We finished by wrapping the base of the trunk in silver tinsel garland, which covered the ends of the rope light and extension cord connection quite well.
To decorate, I hit IKEA for inexpensive ornaments-- clear glass bulbs and metallic pompoms. I alternated in various AB patterns (true to my kindergarten skills) as I hung them on the tree. I put a favorite tree topper angel on top, which hid the ugly duct taped rope light ends.
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| She's a little bit funky, too |
As to the base, sometimes I place little red shoe ornaments around the bottom, and sometimes I place these hand felted elf shoes there. I sort of have a shoe thing...
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| Gotta love elf shoes! |
This year I'm wondering about the new chalkboard ornaments that I picked up at my favorite Ace store. I tell you there is chalkboard everything... they even came with chalk.
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| Chalkboard ornaments– what'll they think of next?? |
And to think I didn't see it on Pinterest first!!! I'm not sure if Pinterest existed five years ago... did it? As much as there is ever original thought, this is mine :) I welcome you to Pin, and let me know what you think in the comments!
Hop on back to Monday Made It. There are some holiday goodies there this time!
And here's a little P.S. In last Thursday's post to the Pick Three linky which you can find HERE I posted a Pin of a holiday refrigerator door. I did indeed do it for our staff lounge fridge this weekend. I conveniently wasn't in school today, so I can innocently act like I had nothing to do with it tomorrow. And luckily, I don't think any of my colleagues read my posts regularly... on more than one occasion I've been happy of that :) Here is a pic before I added the word bubble that said "10 more days!" He's the countdown snowman, I guess!
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| Hee Hee! the little teacher elf said as she decorated the staff lounge! |
The post The Funky Christmas Tree for Monday Made It! first appeared on kidpeopleclassroom.com
Love what you did to your fridge! Makes me want to do it to my own fridge too! I wish I could do it on my classroom door but our district's fire marshall would probably have a cow!
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