Charlie Brown Tree

We're back in Jersey now, and after being gone for two consecutive nights, our kitties are happy to see us. They did a pretty good job of making a mess, putting their food all over the kitchen floor, and tracking their cat litter around the house. To prevent Spam from dehydrating the both of them (remember he likes to kick all the water out of the water bowl), we had to leave the bathroom sink filled with water. Needless to say the water was pretty icky by the time we got home, because guess who loves to stand in the water while he drinks...

This evening Russ and I began our Christmas decorating by digging out our vast collection of polymer clays and making one ornament each. A few years ago we made a whole bunch of ornaments out of Sculpey and Crayola Model Magic. Now we just make one or two more ornaments each year to add to our tree.

This year, Russ made a happy little spam musubi with tamago. The rice, whites and blues of the eyes and mouth are all made of glow-in-the-dark Sculpey (ooooooooo!), and the nori is cute because it looks like camouflage.

I experimented with making a 3-D version of a Mochichick Mochi Kid. It's not the easiest thing in the world to make the tiny body. The body and the hair had to be baked first, and then inserted into the head, and then the whole thing baked together. I think I will also try to make a Forky Mochi Kid this year too, so they can hang out together on the tree.

Speaking of the tree, it is the same sorry little fake tree we bought at Craft Supply of Honolulu five years ago. It normally stands about three feet tall (if that), but last year we began mounting it on a stool which adds almost another foot to its height. We call it a Charlie Brown tree because it looks so sorry. And because it is such a small tree, we are running out of branches to hang all of our ornaments on. I suppose we could get a bigger tree, but we decided that can wait for next year. Especially since we have kittens... we'll be lucky if any of our ornaments survive this year! As you can see, little Spammy was my very eager "helper" in getting the tree set up. And something tells me he's going to keep doing his part to set up the tree, every day all the way until we take it down after New Years!