back to christmas...

long story...

after closing on this house on december 18th, 1995, we had three days to move from my Dream Home into a pint-sized fixer upper...

yeah...

the week before Christmas...

it was not a Good Time and i was not in a Good Place...

on the 23rd, i came "home" from working the night shift and found that Michael Myson and Melissa had put up an old artificial Christmas tree that was already broken before it was dropped off a friend's pickup truck ... Mikey had run wires from the tree to a nail in the wall to keep the tree upright, and the two of them decorated as far up as they could reach

 with whatever they could find...

it was touching and endearing and beautiful...

yes, it was...

but... 

instead of feeling blessed by the Spirit of Christmas in my youngest children's eyes, i  was overwhelmed with Sadness and Loss...

and after they left to spend Christmas Eve with the eXMan and his family... 

Guilt came to live here...

the next year, i bought a new tree...

a slim (skinny) blue spruce

we set it up in the living room and decorated with homemade ornaments that Michael and Melissa made with raw hide and pony beads and conchas 

and some pink berry picks that i found on sale...

i didn't have a tree skirt, so i spread woven place mats under it and i thought it was beautiful...

and it was all ours...

after a few years, that skinny blue spruce was losing more needles than it was keeping...

and its wire branches were not up to holding ornaments

or even lights...

and all of my kids started calling it Mom's Charlie Brown Tree...

so i let myself be shamed into buying a big fat tree - Melissa's tree - and it is beautiful, too...

she decorates it with red and white ornaments

 and cranberry bead garlands and popcorn garlands...

it is a proper Christmas tree

 and it always looks awesome...

but i missed my skinny little spruce...

i had collected a lot of southwestern-themed ornaments and garlands

and even a birch wood tree topper...

but still no tree skirt...

so i decided that i would put up MY tree in my bedroom

 AFTER i made a tree skirt for it...

fast forward five or ten years...

short...

last year, in july, i paper-pieced four spirit guide animals based on Quilted Legends of the West by Judy Zehner and Kim Mosher...

 joined them into a big square...

not looking like much...

and sent it off to Liz Bowman to do her quilting magic...

ooooo!!! dream catchers!!

i dunno how Liz always manages to make my mediocre piecing look so incredibly awesome...

anywho...

 i trimmed off the corners (thanks to my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Walsh, who taught me how to make a compass with a string and a pencil)...

 crossed my fingers...

 cut a slit and center hole...

 and bound it with bias binding (thanks to The Net and all its continuos bias binding tutorials)...

maybe THIS should be the right side

and brought my sad, skinny little blue spruce tree in from the cold...

coulda done a better job with those ornaments ... there's always next year

gonna hafta move that into the corner so i don't run into it

gonna need some PRESENTS to put under there!!!

purty, innit?!?

the tree needed some company

so i dug out the little Nativity...

sweet Baby Jesus

and celebrated with my skinny little blue spruce tree till the day after Christmas...

and now i've decided that i need another tree for my space ornaments... 

and that tree is gonna need a tree skirt...

don't worry - it's just a phase

cuz we don't need no stinkin' bare-bottomed trees...

i am linking up with Mama Spark's WIPS with Friends

Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.

George S. Patton