If The Wise Men Had Been Into Disco

So for this year's holiday theme I decided to go with something a little intellectual, and I call it "Not Totally Classy."  I started off presents with muted metallic papers, kind of the wrapping equivalent of the homes who only do the all-white Christmas lights, considering this a more tasteful approach.  Unfortunately, since I had to use a flash to take the pictures, the papers come off far more gauche than they actually are in real life.  You'll have to trust me that when you're up close, these are more of a Martha Stewart metallic-- you might even want to call the gold "burnished"-- than Vanessa Minnillo at the 2007 Grammy's metallic.  So that's the classy part.

Then I took curling ribbons in assorted vivid, glittering colors, bordering on tacky, and I affixed them to the gifts beneath certainly tacky glittered fruits and leaves in the colors that my parents let me redo my bedroom in as we headed into the 90's.  The presents then transformed into that girl who caves and lets down her hair at back end of the party, the ribbons like a tightly wound ponytail that's finally coming undone.  Or like the backside of a mullet.  That's the "not totally" part.

And then you have a wrapping theme that is "Not totally classy."  This is only the top level of the present table, but you get the idea.

   

 

This year is particularly festive because having a gentile boyfriend, I am now default-qualified to get a real, living tree.  Granted, we could only afford a tree that's about three feet high, but it smells really great and has a lot of charm, as most miniaturized things tend to do.  But it turns out that because the branches are so delicate, we were having a tough time finding perfect ornaments for it because everything was too heavy or out of proportion.  Then I remembered that there was a period of time, back in the days when I used to work at the Disney Channel, when I used to come home and make Shrinky Dink zipper pulls all night.  I know!  It's so fucked up!  So anyway, I dug through my old stuff and I couldn't believe it, but I found the baggie of many Shrinky Dinks with convenient holes punched in their heads, and we just looped the ornament hangers through them.  Soon enough we had the most beautiful tree.  (Please ignore the paper towels from where we poured too much water into the base and had a big spill.  It's not part of the intended aesthetic effect.)

 
 Our tree has things like this adorable aqua lamb on it:

 And this tooth, holding his own toothbrush:

 And mysteriously, this computer I made that has its browser permanently set to bobsaget.com.  I can't explain it now, six years later, but I still love the guy.

 Of course, we still needed a topper, but the glittering snowflake I had from some craft project of yore didn't seem personal enough for what we were trying to achieve with our first real tree together.  So then I whipped out a fresh sheet of Shrinky Dink paper and I drew up our beloved French Bulldog, Christmas, and I put a shining star on top of her head-- because that's really what she is, our shining star with a gas problem. And when you think about it, don't all stars up in the sky have that anyway?

 

Comments

[nerr]

Christmas is the best part. Second is the wee toothbrush.