Christmas Tree Up!

Yesterday I fell asleep before I was able to post!  I fell asleep early and only just woke up at 3:00 pm.  That was probably because I tried to do to much yesterday.  I worked on the kitchen and made biscuits so we could try some black current preserves.  Sadly the preserves weren't as good as I've had before.  Sounds strange but one of our treats is a jar of preserves occasionally.

So after the biscuits, I put up the Christmas tree.  This is my third year with a tree and have 7 ornaments so far.  That is counting the copper ones I've been making.  I also strung lights on the tree for the first time and it was very comic!  The lights are so unevenly strung it looks awful.  But I am going to try to restring them.  There were also some surprises!  The green and copper snowflakes just blended into the tree but the all copper snowflake looks fantastic.  I found some smaller wire snowflake forms and will make these with all copper beads.  The other idea that I've had is to use the crochet wire necklace tutorial and make a very long piece to use as a garland.  Here is the link to the tutorial http://ravingsofamadcrafter.blogspot.com/2012/09/crochet-wire-necklace-tutorial-ii.html

I've made a short piece of the garland and it looks great.  It is just that the garland will use a lot of copper wire and beads.  That gives me two ways to recycle the garland after Christmas.  First after Christmas I could cut the garland into crocheted wire necklaces.  That would be an easy and great way to recycle but what would I do with all the necklaces?  The second idea is to cut a few inches of garland at a time and recover the beads and then straightening the wire to use on earrings and other small projects.  I could also go back to my original idea of making the copper necklaces and hooking them together as a garland.  Then people could choose the one they like from the tree and I could give it to them as a gift.  I will have to think about it.

The other gift project is to make truffles and a bread (ie. stollen or cherry bread).  I'm not sure I have the energy to make food this year.  I would also like to make jewelry as gifts.  It just seems a waste to send a box without several goodies for each family.

Yesterday I started making some earrings which I messed up rather badly.  I was making the earring rather abstract and couldn't get a pair to look alike.  I do plan on making a great many earrings this season but maybe not abstract ones!  I'm not able to get pictures right now so I will try again tomorrow.