A Pageant that Delights

Just sit back and enjoy! The Christmas story, retold.

Tabletop Book Tree -- Happy Holidays!

After seeing a full size Holiday Book Tree on the internet, I decided I had to make a tabletop version of my own. Despite no experience in structural engineering, I managed the task. It’s not perfect, but, to quote Charlie Brown, “It’s not such a bad little tree…”

Bonus: It gives the little ornament mice that I costumed last year as Addie, Harold and Pippin from The Great American Mousical a place to lean, and it also allows my sweet little Very Fairy Princess-like ballet girlie to be a tree topper. (She has trouble standing alone, so had to be assisted with a book. We all need something to lean on at some points in our lives…) The lights are star-shaped — and stringing lights on a tree is far easier than stringing them on a pile of books, I can tell you right now. Books don’t have branches to hold the lights.

Here’s the finished tree (at J’s suggestion, I also took pictures of the entire process in case I want to do this again sometime.)

And then I took a picture without flash, so you could really see the star-shaped lights (only the lights turned out blurry. I assure you they're star-shaped!):

Guests at the table...

I sometimes find it a bit lonely eating at Mum & Dad's table alone, although you'd think I'd be used to it by now -- it's three years since either of them sat at that table.  (One year since their deaths, three years since they went into nursing homes.)

I tend to distract myself by reading while I'm eating, but that means I hardly notice my food -- definitely not mindful eating, nor conducive to good digestion, methinks.

A friend jokingly suggested a blow-up doll for the chair opposite me -- at least I hope it was a joking suggestion! I've found a better alternative, at least for the coming month.

I'm populating the other end of the table with friends and family -- through the birthday cards and Christmas cards that will be arriving through December. They're joined by a little vignette of a scene -- my Christmas music box (in the shape of a grand piano) and three little stuffed mice that I dressed last year to represent three of the mice in the book The Great American Mousical by Julie Andrews Edwards and Emma Walton Hamilton. Pippin, Harold and Addie (the diva). (Click to enlarge.)

I think they'll all make very nice guests at my table.