We didn’t do a real tree year this year, or even the fake one from the shed. Instead I copied an idea from a blog that I follow. I followed the links in the post the picture. Saved the picture on a flash drive and took it to Office Depot. The lady in the print department printed it right then for about $20. It took about 5 minutes. We used poster hangers that Chris bought a few years ago to hang some posters in his office. He look one of his work posters down for a few weeks so that we could hang our tree.

We decorated it with glittery snowflakes and glittery stars with a beaded star for the top. We used removable tape to stick them on and it came off really nicely without messing up the print when we took it down yesterday.

We may buy another set of poster hangers so that we don’t have to take a poster down to put the tree up again next year. Also, I think that I would like “ornaments” with more color.

(Also, we printed ours in color rather than black and white and then coloring on it with crayons as the person with the “original” idea did. That’s why it was $20 instead of $5 but it saved a lot of time.)

I made this pouch for my niece Rowyn for Christmas. She liked it so much that, when she couldn’t find it and thought that it might have been thrown out with the wrapping paper, she stood out in the rain pulling garbage out of a garbage can as tall as she is. She finally found it sitting on my mom’s bed. Poor thing.

I bought a .pdf pattern on-line from Paisley Pear to make it. It’s called the Emmy Clutch Pouch. I think that I’m going to make a few more. I really like it.

I also made a pouch (different style) for Jean but forgot to take a picture of it. I’ll do that on Saturday. I like to have pictures of the things that I’ve made.

I actually made three gifts this year which means I was a bit of a slacker but oh well.

I made these for my nephew Caleb. He seems to like them. At least as much as a four year old with the attention span of gnat likes anything.

I used free patterns from Ravelry.

I’ve decided to steal this idea. I used a picture from this site. I used the one with the white background. Office Depot charged me $20 for a color 24 by 36 inches print. Chris and I are going to hang it using poster hangers and decorate with whatever we like. I’ll post a picture of the finished project when that happens.

No pictures today.

I’ve recently finished reading The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. If you liked Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice (without the zombies) they you’ll probably like this book too. It’s mostly modern though. I couldn’t quite figure out the decade but at least 1950s or more modern. There are telephones and cars but never a mention of computers and cell phones. Lots of letter writing. I really enjoyed it.

Watched a few movies again (no telling how many times I’ve already seen them) in the last week or so. MIB 1 and 2 and Ghostbusters 1 and 2. They are such fun movies. Even the 10th or whatever time.

Also watched Troll Hunter. It is a Norwegian film about, oh I don’t know, trolls maybe. Ok, it’s about trolls. I really liked it. Not really scary. Not scary at all really. Just a good movie. Surprisingly great CGI. Or maybe not so surprising. I thought that it was low budget but maybe it wasn’t. Not a lot of CGI. Beautiful scenery. I watched it with subtitles and found myself trying to analyze the language. Trying to find a noun or verb or anything recognizable. Nope. It sounded all mixed together except the occasional English word which totally caught me off guard a few times.

Watched Chawz Friday evening. So funny and silly. Not stupid though. A little scary, like a jump or too. It’s a Korean “remake” of Jaws except that it’s a boar around a little village in Korea. Lots of falling down. It was fun to watch.

I want to watch Attack the Block. It’s on Chris’s queue and he’s moved it to the top. So we should get it soon.

In addition to movie watching, I’ve made a few quilt blocks, almost finished knitting a “dead fish” hat and have been studying Spanish using Rosetta Stone through an account with work. They bought a few licenses for the online version and I was lucky enough to receive the rights to one of the licenses. I totally stomped some guy named Santiago from Columbia in a vocabulary game a few minutes ago. He was quickly catching up to me though, so I shouldn’t brag too much.