It is finished.

Please, please, o' pretty please, if you can tell where I work from these photos, please do not mention it in the comments. I'm all weird about loving to stay anonymous on the blog. E-mail me about it! I'd love to talk about my lovely place o' employment privately with you. Thanks!

Now with that out of the way (sorry, but I'm sure y'all understand), I had my tree decorating demo this weekend. Mom came to help me. Yes, I have thanked her profusely.

It was a lovely day and I did the demo out in our middle courtyard. I did have a crowd when I started, but I think that I bored them to tears when I had to do the initial tying in of the sprigs and things. I did end up having one couple that stayed for an hour and 45 minutes.

Without further chattering on, here are some ideas of decorating with natural elements:

Spiky balls made with Sweet Gum Fruits. I sprayed the Sweet Gum Fruits silver, glued half cut round/pointy ended toothpicks in each hole, then sprayed with silver again. When the paint was still wet, I hit them with a little of the tinsel glitter that I used.

The Sweet Gum Fruits wreath that I made. My boss loaned me her Martha Stewart Living magazine that had this in it. All it is are Sweet Gum Fruits lightly sprayed with silver (I liked to not have them perfectly silver, so as to keep some natural color in them), lightly sprayed the front of the small straw wreath with silver paint, hot glued enough to floral pins to make the outer and inner rings, then glued the fruits on at a diagonal. When I was finished, I tapped some white school glue on top of the fruits and sprinkled the whole thing with some of the tinsel glitter that Martha Stewart is now selling at Michael's. I would love to cover the earth in that stuff. It. is. wonderful.

The milkweed pods from my yard. They were a little moldy looking, so I sprayed the outside with silver, pulled the inside guts out of some of them with really long tweezers, clear coated the fluffy seeds and finished by painting white school glue onto the interior of the pods and sloshed some of my favorite tinsel glitter in them. Yum.

Rather than going about it in a traditional way, I strung cranberries onto floral wire. The top cap is a drilled whole nutmeg. I just took the floral wire, turned a little curly Q at the top (to keep the nuts from falling off), put either the whole cranberries or drilled buckeyes on the wire and finished them off with an ear clutch (the rubber stoppers for your earrings.)

I also strung cranberries on memory wire used for bracelets. (Cut the memory wire in half or they will be way too long.) Just bend the ends with a little loop for the ornament hook. I also made some bay leaf poinsettias. I admit that they were the last thing I did, thought that they were a little hokey, but people loved them. Who knew?

I filled a lot of clear ornaments. This one is filled with hydrangea. It is a little tricky, but it is possible to get the full flower in there whole. You just need to use your gentle handies.

Lavender. The nice thing about the filled ornaments is that you can smell their scent. I think that the warmth of the Christmas lights will really make them smell lovely. It's a theory, anyhow.

Sedum from our backyard. Lightly and patch-like sprayed with gold, then I tapped some white school glue on the top with a flat ended artist paint brush and sprinkled some fantastic tinsel glitter on top.

Some dried Kiss Me Over the Garden Gate (vase number 1) and some Obedient Plant seed pods (vase number 2) sprayed gold (they looked bad before I sprayed them).

My tools. The glitter I've been singing the praises of (You go, Martha!) and the spray paint I used.

The tree before I loved on it.

The tree after I loved on it and I promise that this picture is dreadful. It looks lovely in person, but it is sitting at a slight angle and I didn't want to put this on there, but I figured that someone would give me flak about not putting a full picture on here. (Yes, the run-on was as exhausting to type as it was to read.)
Here's at least a better picture of the top of the tree!

Some close-up shots. I figure that they are self-explanatory.



My boss seemed happy. The crowd seemed happy. I have reclaimed my living room from what Hubs termed as "the forest floor." Hooray!

Smiles in my weekend:
- Getting the demo done. I'm not a very good public speaker. I was answering questions and tuning out the view of the public so as to not make myself nervous and little did I know that one of my best friends was not only in small crowd, but was asking me questions that I was answering in full! I realized that she was there and we got a good laugh. She told me that she just thought I was being professional. I told her that I was just being an air head!
- Hubs fixed the tub drain. Now the water goes down without coaxing it to do so.
- K- helping me do some of the ornaments for the demo.
- That I didn't burn the house down when the glue gun went out. Thankfully, I was sitting right next to it when it went, "ZZZT! ZZZT!" [Insert smoke, orangeness of light and burning stink.] I looked at the outlet, realized that was fine so I grabbed hold of the cord and yanked it out of the wall. Hubs bought me another glue gun and when looking at it tonight, he realized that it is separating and he is taking it back. We don't need another going out. (He bought me a high temp gun, which is why I think the second one is separating. It got really, really hot.)

I'm tired. I've got school uniforms to iron for the week, then off to bed. 'Night.