Oh, Christmas Tree!

Well, hello, blogland! Bet you thought you'd seen the last of me, didn't you? You couldn't be that lucky, evil never disappears, trust me...it's the reason so many ex-husbands still roam the earth LOL
It's been a busy time for me and my world lately...LOTS of work, not enough sleep and general holiday semi-sadness. Don't get too worried, the only sadness is that I missed a holiday at home. I know I was missed, it's not often that I miss a holiday with the families. Sadly, this year, I'll likely be missing both the big ones. Fear not, though, I'll be taken care of. BJ's family takes care of me, they're all amazing. Bill, Sue, Stasia and Addison are all wonderful, and rest assured - they'd never let anything happen to me that I didn't deserve LOL
On a lighter note, I'm following Aunt Cawnin's lead and I'm going to show off our beautiful decorations! We went to WalMart Thursday night and bought a Christmas tree, and BJ and I decorated it last night. In all the years I've had a Christmas tree away from Mom and Dad's house, I've never had a more beautiful tree! It was so pretty when we lit it up that I started to tear up a little bit. I'm so proud of it!
Sue contributed the vast majority of the ornaments (it's a tight Christmas for everyone, but no reason why BJ and I shouldn't have a beautiful first Christmas), but BJ and I added our own unique touch to it. For instance, BJ has two small handheld weapons - a keychain tonfa and a keychain kubaton - that we made into ornaments. If you don't know what they are, look them up, they're interesting little pieces of weaponry. For my part, I made ornaments of a few select pieces of my key collection Some of my old skeleton keys, my shackles key and a few of my scrolled keys are hanging from the branches. Also, as you can see, we added candy canes - BJ's are blueberry, mine are strawberry...YUM! And, for the pièce de résistance, there is the tree topper. You will never find another tree topper like that anywhere in the world. "Why not?" you may ask...well, because we made it ourselves, together! We couldn't find a tree topper that we liked, so tonight before we decorated the tree we sat down and straightened a wire coat hanger, bent it into the shape of a star, and wrapped it with a 50-strand of white mini lights followed by blue and silver tinsel (the same tinsel we used on the rest of the tree, to match). As a final touch, we attached a tiny angel ornament (courtesy of Momma Sue) to the center of the star. It's so beautiful, I would never trade it for any other tree topper in the world!
Our cat, Swisher, decided very early on that he likes this Christmas business. He's only 9 months old, so he's still in kitten-mode, and EVERYTHING in the house is a cat toy/snack...including the Christmas tree! No sooner did we have the tree up and appropriately fluffed, than he ran into the room like a furry little orange bat out of hell and set about chewing on the branches, the base, the LIGHTS (sound like my brother?!)...anything on the tree that he could get his fangs into! Fortunately for us, he's a good boy and a fast learner, so we shook the ibuprofen bottle at him and he promptly turned loose and went to his chair to watch and take a nap. Yeah, that's our aversion therapy for Swish...when he's doing something wrong, we shake a BIG bottle of ibuprofen at him and he stops and runs like hell LOL
Oh, also, I'm working on an afghan! Yup, I'm part of the crochet cult! I found a WONDERFUL website - www.crochetpatterncentral.com - and searched through all the patterns until I found one that was simple enough to fly through and keep my fingers busy in the evenings, and one just caught my eye. At first I didn't realize WHY it caught my eye, I just thought it was a pretty afghan, and then I happened to notice the website I was linked to in order to get the pattern, and then it occurred to me...I already HAVE this afghan!
Does this look familiar to any of my readers?!
I know at least one of you is saying "HEY, I MADE THAT!!"

*cough* My Precious... *cough*

Yeah, I get my creative side from Mom's side of the family...we all crochet, cross stitch, work needlepoint or plastic canvas - anything craft-related, we're totally there! Obviously, I'm no exception. By the time this afghan is done, I'll have three different colors of snowflakes placed in such a way that no two adjoining snowflakes will be the same color. I think it will turn out beautifully. So far, I've just been working in Periwinkle with a Navy border, but I also have White and a color called Sh. Dusk (it's an ombre that incorporates all three major colors I'm using) to work in. I'll keep you updated on the progress as my afghan grows!
Well, world, I believe that's all I have to say about that. I'll be back later with more goings-on in my neck of the woods!