"It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas"

"♪♪....everywhere you go. ♪"  Well, everywhere but at my house! I have lots of boxes in the hallway, and a couple of things put out, but it's only about 1/2 of 1% of what we have!

 Before I can really get started there are a couple of things I need. Some pretty wired-ribbon to make a new bow for the mantle wreath, some long tapers, and pears. Pears? Not the eating kind, the decorating kind. Why? It’s a long story (all my stories are LONG!)

 Some years ago at a Christmas Bazaar, I bought a black wrought iron Christmas tree. I just fell in love with it. It's about 3' tall and has four tiers of "limbs" each ending with a small candle holder, spikey-thing to hold a candle. There are about 6 holders per tier.


When M-t-G was a toddler, I didn't want to put real candles on it because she was mobile and curious and into everything (I think she was 2-3).  So in a flash of inspiration, I decided this would be my Pear Tree (you know, the one with the Partridge in it!)  I found some wonderful sparkly pear ornaments but could only get ten, so I used little copper bows on the remaining holders.  The first year, I used a little miscellaneous bird (that I usually had on the big tree) for the partridge.  Anyone who knew anything about birds, knew it wasn't anywhere close to a partridge, so I went on a hunt to find a partridge that wasn't breakable or too big or garish or "cutesy". I wanted the perfect one! It took a while but I finally found one I liked.


And the Pear Tree has been a part of Christmas ever since.

I took this photo last year just before we were taking everything down for the year, that's why there are various odd colored bits on the table below. If you look really closely at the lower left corner you can see the front part of the sparkly Partridge that I found.

The color in the photo isn't quite true, the bows are more of a burnished copper color, very rich-looking, and the pears are more green. It is really pretty, especially with the softer lights in the evening.


Now if you zero in on the pears you can see that the glittery stuff is coming off...in large clumps! They look like they're molting or something.  I suppose that's understandable.  They are coming up on 10 years old.  It's too bad because the whole thing worked pretty well and I really liked my tree.  So I want to replace them.


Thus, after lunch today, I thought I'd pop into Michael's to see what I could find. Well, the short answer to what I found is Absolutely Nothing!  Michael's stock had been depleted, picked over, broken, and a mess! I walked all over that store, looking under, behind, and between all sorts of stuff I didn’t want.

After much looking all I could find was one bag of tiny (1 ½”) green pears….too small; a bag of 5 life-sized Red pears….too big and too bright…and a centerpiece with a few pretty medium-sized, green glittery pears….on sale for only $15 each, of which they had 3. The problem was that I would have needed 5 of them to harvest enough pears!  No way was I going to chase all around town to the other Michael’s and then spend over $75 to buy centerpieces I was going to dismantle just to get the pears that should have cost about $10 tops!!


Now the thing that irritates me most is that today, well yesterday now, was only Nov 30! The store looked more like the day after Christmas sale than just after Thanksgiving. Stores are continuing to push us into the season earlier and earlier. In order for crafty folks to be able to get the supplies they need for their Christmas projects, they must have to buy the stuff in September!  And for procrastinators, like me, by the time we decide to make something, all that’s left is the dregs! That makes me crazy! I purposely don’t do anything about Christmas until after T-Day! Now, with the practices of the stores I am being pressured to yield to someone else’s timetable that's really just a marketing ploy! Arrgghhh!


Don't you think those pears will hold together for another year? They don’t look TOO bad, right?  Especially if I keep the lights down really really low…. Maybe. Possibly. (Sigh!)


Awww, rot! I’ll try Hobby Lobby tomorrow.