Wow. The candy cane tree is really beautiful. You have a hidden talent for decorating trees!

On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 10:22 AM Effie in the desert <wadesert@hotmail.com> wrote:

Please first read my message in the reply to Todd's email about TTC 2016.

This is the last of the messages with photos of trees at the railroad museum. I have decorated one other this year but do not have a picture of it at this time. I may take one before the season is over. One of the tasks put on the "to do " list at the Agricultural museum was to decorate the Christmas tree. Could I pass that up?

The lantern tree is similar to the one I did last year. I'd dug around in boxes and found several strings of these lights that are red and covered with the plastic lanterns. Some are smaller than others though most people would never notice. A couple of these had lost their lantern cover but fortuitously I found them floating around in boxes and bins so managed to get them all covered. I also found at least two (maybe more) boxes of brand new lantern lights. We could cover a big tree with them if Mary wanted.

This tree is again in the corner behind the kids craft area. I used different train ornaments on it than I did last year. There are two "trains" under the tree, one of which you can see in the photo. One is pink, the other blue. Both are tin cans that at some time must have had candy in them. The front of the train comes out of the cab to open it to get at the candy.

The second of these trees is mine alone. Mary gave me a big tree and said "do it". As with last year I dug through boxes planning and thinking and decided on the candy cane theme. All the ornaments are either red or white. This picture doesn't do the tree justice. It really does look a lot better than it seems here.

This photo was taken from the top of a ladder as this tree sits on top of a couple of antique wooden desks. I had to decorate it while standing on the desks on either side of the tree. So I did one side, then the other side, and used the ladder only for the very front.

If you zoom out you can see some of the red and white, and all white glass balls. These are very elegant looking and weren't used at all last year. I really liked them but they didn't fit anywhere. This year those ornaments were a large part of why I decided on the candy cane theme. There are numerous kinds of fake candy canes on the tree - some made of plastic, others of Styrofoam wrapped in red ribbon. There are a few real candy canes in the branches. All of the candy canes I scavenged out of Mary's "Candy tree" box of ornaments.

The tree topper is a real candy cane that is about a foot long. It was so heavy everything I tried to attach it didn't work. It bent and drooped and I was afraid it would topple the whole tree. I told Roger I needed something solid and straight. Not too long later he came in with a broken piece of hacksaw blade. With him standing on one desk on one side of the tree, and me on the other desk on the other side, we wired the saw blade to the top of the tree, then wired the candy cane to the blade. It's not going anywhere any time soon.

While at home thinking about this tree I was concerned that I wouldn't find garland that would work. I knew we had red, and green, and gold, and silver, but was pleased to find the white. It was perfect and just what I wanted. Mary later told me that while she was decorating a display case using green and gold garland she thought the white would never get used. Mary was standing looking at this tree from a distance soon after I'd finished it and said she thought the white garland looked like snow on the branches. I don't see it, but that's okay.

The garland was in several pieces, some short, some long. I initially tried it with all one color then the other but didn't like it. I took it all off and alternated them. It meant doing some fancy twisting and looping on the backside so it would come out correctly in front.

You'll again notice the packages under the tree are wrapped in candy cane themed paper. The table cloth has peppermint "candy" all over it. That's a plastic cloth with a felt backing. We had to put it down before putting the tree up on the desk. That meant it was there when I was walking on the desk to decorate. It took only one step on it to realize it was as slick as glass on the varnished desk top. Mary was very particular that it not get creased or bent and stay straight. She wasn't there when I folded it up -scrunched in a ball, under the tree to get it out of my way so I wasn't walking on it.

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