You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul. ~George Bernard Shaw
Chihuly’s work definitely makes me see my soul and is also a perfect way to ring out 2021 in a bright, colorful fashion. May your 2022 be as bright as this glorious creation!
Sometimes the light is the star as it is here, making the ordinary extraordinary. Gotta pull out all the stops for the last few days of the Life in Colour challenge, one I’ve greatly enjoyed the past few years! Here the emphasis is on “bright” as opposed to all sorts of colors.
I think this might qualify as “bright” for Jude, don’t you?
It may be winter and almost 2022 but fall has finally arrived in our part of Arizona. 🙂
And from another tree.
I added a bit of sparkly editing today just for fun, but I enjoy having actual sparkles during Christmas. The blue tinsel garland has silver stars in it while the cluster of colorful stars on the right look as if they’re erupting from the base. The two white angels were purchased years ago at a church Christmas sale and are taking a ride in the horseless sleigh. 🙂 In the background in the mirror you get just a peek of our French Christmas table cloth.
This is our Noah tree, gifted to us by my sister-in-law many years ago. The base is the ark, Noah and his wife, and duos of animals while there are two sets of similar small ornaments on the tree supplemented by tiny gardening-themed ornaments from who-remembers-where-or-when. Candle St. Nick/Santa stands ready to deliver gifts over on the left. On the right is one of my latest additions, our Swedish gnome with whom I fell instantly in love at an IKEA visit in southern California. Still deciding on a name. Lars? Sven? Ragnar (more of a Viking sound)? No matter, he’s adorable.
No real Christmas tree this year because without family coming in, we decided for the second year in a row not to have a big tree, leaving many ornaments to languish in their bin in the garage. But we have the nature/bird tree. I’ve been collecting ornaments for this tree, which sits on our sideboard, for many years. We have birds of all sorts, snowflakes needle-pointed by my mom in better days (as well as other ornaments she made), several owls, a glass octopus I bought in a Christmas market in Philadelphia, a cricket from my s-i-l in France, and many others. It’s colorful day and night and gives me joy to see each year.
I love Christmas and although we don’t have outdoor decorations, we have lots of indoor ones. Outside we rely on our neighbors on either side who have enough decorations for all three of our houses. In fact our entire neighborhood shines brightly at night.
But I digress. When we moved, I had to find new places for some of our decorations. Since Jude wants us to close out the year with bright, colorful, let me start with two shelves in our living room. The stockings hang below this first shelf on the holders with the stars and the reindeer. The sculptured Indian serenely oversees everything while rocking his sparkly boa. Is that culturally inappropriate? He doesn’t seem to mind.
The next shelf up hosts a small town and miscellaneous decorations. The blue lights add color and brightness. Most of these used to go on our mantel but although we have a gas fireplace here, the wide shelf above it holds our TV and PlayStation, so no room for decorations.
I used to put all my decorations in one large plastic bin. Each year I’d have to take them all out and try to remember where they all went, taking up a great deal of space and time in the interim. One day I realized I could put all the decorations for each area (piano top, mantel, various shelves) in one box per area, label it, and each year it would be simple to decorate one small bit at a time. It works a treat!
fantastic: conceived or appearing as if conceived by an unrestrained imagination; odd and remarkable
This, that and the other thing 