Can't Stand To See Them Go

St. Valentine blessed me with a pair of flower arrangements this year. What can I say, I'm a lucky girl. Oh that and my Granny loves me (aww, Arkansas!). And while the bulk of the flowers in the arrangements lasted a good week or more, when it came time to throw out the flowers, there were three white carnations with life left in them still and a heck of a lot of greenery that still looked nice and fresh so I decided to do a quartet of mini arrangements. I have a little collection of baby glass jars/vases and I thought they'd pair nicely with some bone china candle holders. I tinkered around with a lot of destinations for the four little flower holders and after a stint in my bedroom, bathroom, desk area, kitchen, living room window sills, they found a good home atop my light-up liquor table. I had to turn old Queen Victoria on an untapped bottle of Bombay gin on her side to prop up one little vase, you know, to give the arrangements so height variance.
I was pleased with my camera's treatment of these pictures. Usually shooting candles and twinky lights can be dull. I thought the colors turned out pretty vibrant (and I cheated with a bit of dramatic photo toning). So I am showing three pictures. Below is a shot of a single vase and then a view from above.

Office Tannenbaum

This is my 16" office Christmas tree, all decked out with battery operated red lights, little glittery silver snowballs and, just to amp up the Avril Lavigne factor, some skull and crossbones garland (homemade of course). And if my desk doesn't say "festive if not overboard" I don't know what does. I hope y'all enjoy this slice of my daily life here at work. Behind the tree is a corkboard covered in that I choose to call my inspiration board because I tack up little bits and pieces I collect.


A close up. You needed it. You wanted it. You got it.

Light Up Liquor Table

I remember back in the Christmas-post writing season that taking pictures of anything that involves twinky lights is difficult. The flash overpowers them and, thus, they look pretty lame. But sans flash looks pretty cheesy too. And as I never took a class in photography, I hope you can forgive me for the extremely low quality of these pictures...

I stole this idea from the holiday issue of Blueprint, the dead Martha Stewart magazine that I was really smitten with. I'm actually still mourning its loss. Going to the magazine rack at Barnes and Noble has certainly lost a lot of its charm at this point. I'm always hoping that Blueprint will be revived. And I know I'm not the only one! Moving on... So I the moment I saw the Blueprint version of this project I knew I needed it to top my liquor cabinet, which, by the way, used to reside at the Dallas club Sense. It's great because that corner is sort of dark and dreary, and this is project that really lights up the space and creates a festive atmosphere all the time! Well, all the time that it's plugged in. I am still a little scared that the whole thing will catch fire and burn down my apartment building (and make me eligible for a Darwin Award). And when my coworker Mariya mentioned that Michaels was having a big sale (with 50% off one item coupons), I jumped at my chance to turn this long-term design dream into reality. My normally $40 canvas was a cool $20 thanks to the coupon, bringing the total cost of the project to about $21, since I bought a thing of paint, too. The twinky lights were donated by my mommy. So I painted the canvas a nice cream color, with some patches that tended toward yellow and others toward pink/red. So it's modern art gone bad. Then I poked 200 holes in the back using a fav tool from the hardware store to make these three starburst shapes and carefully shoved the lights into the holes. And then I plugged it in, and well, you get the idea.

I like it a lot. Come by, I'll make you a cocktail and we'll admire it together. (Oh and by the way, the picture below is a better view of the whole thing. I realize it looks terribly boring though. I'm going to have to work on that...)