West Elm Inspired

I recently downloaded a copy of the West Elm catalog to my new NOOK HD (thank you, again, Hanna Andersson!). While flipping through the pages, I came across this photo and swooned. That blue wall! That orange chair! The rustic wood floor and the real Christmas tree! Stunning! I loved the paper garland that was used to decorate the tree.

Hey, paper garland? I can do that!

We finally picked out a Christmas tree yesterday. A Frasier Fir, our first real tree. The tree, the lights, and the stand cost under $50 total. Sometimes, it pays to procrastinate! Although the one downfall of waiting was that lights seemed to be sold out everywhere. We managed to find two boxes of colored lights. Our tree is very colorful!

One thing we discovered about real trees...the branches cannot support the heavy ornaments without serious sagging. So we skipped heavy ornaments in favor of lighter varieties. Lucky for me, my sweet Mom had given me a box of lightweight colored Christmas ornaments last year that matched perfectly with our colored lights. I pulled out the same colors of cardstock and got to work.

I got a little punch drunk, as you can see!

After punching, I folded the circles down the center.

This job is a lot more fun if you can enlist a friend to help!

I glued the folded circles onto a length of baker's twine. I used a repeating pattern of red, blue, green, purple, and pink.

The effect? Super fun, folksy and colorfully hand-crafted.

I love our perfectly imperfect Christmas tree! It reminds me of the colorful world of the video game Sugar Rush (from the movie Wreck It Ralph).

Thanks for visiting the cafe today! Merry Christmas Eve, my friends!