Under The Stars

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Trees 5
by Effie in the desert 10 Dec '16

10 Dec '16

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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Trees 4
by Effie in the desert 10 Dec '16

10 Dec '16

Please first read my message in the reply to Todd's email about TTC 2016. This is the Disney/Mickey tree. I had a really hard time trying to take pictures of this tree. I tried with lights in the room and with them off. I tried it from different angles. I couldn't get close to the tree because it had already been put on top of the speeder. Getting power to it so I could turn on the lights for the photo was a difficult problem. Like I said, I took all these pictures before things were finally set. The strings of lights on this tree are Mickey, Donald, and Goofy. The clear lights stick into the head of the characters, then their bodies attach. One of the Donald's has lost his body. Since the tree is up high I doubt anyone notices the decapitated head! Mary gave me this tree and the light strings, and only a few balls that had Disney characters on them. There was no where close to enough to for even this small tree. I remembered the Mickey & Minnie stuffed animals from last year's animal tree so I dug around in that box until I found them. As you can see, I used one of them as the topper. Mary has bought more Disney characters and decorations since I did these. I need to go look to see how the trees ended up looking. When I did my part I left her a note telling her the lighted characters needed to be turned to face outwards after the tree was in place. I don't know if that ever happened. These had nothing on them to attach to the branches so all you can do is drape them across branches, or twist the strands of the cord around a branch.

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Trees 3
by Effie in the desert 10 Dec '16

10 Dec '16

Please first read my message in the reply to Todd's email about TTC 2016. The first photo that I call Twins is of two small trees. These sit on top of the cabinet full of silver. Mary calls them "Forest trees" because their trunk is made to look like real wood. The wood star on the top is permanently attached. These were very scrawny and ugly trees. They'd been scrunched into boxes and all the "needles" and "branches" were flat. It took a long time to simply fluff (Mary's word) them out. Mary bought a couple of mantle covers that are in place along the top of the cabinet on which these trees are sitting. It is really pretty and also lights up. She hung some ornaments along it. I need to get a photo of it before it's taken down. These photos were taken when the trees had simply been put up to get them off the floor and out of the way so the skirts weren't "settled". I call these trees twins because they are identically decorated - i.e. exactly the same number of ornaments in the same configuration on both. I got to plan what to do with these and decided on the symmetry and four colors that mirrored each other. Then I discovered there are almost no green balls among hundreds of ornaments. So both got the gold with the respective red and blue. After I was done with them, Mary put some of the smallest of the red cardinals on both so they ended up not being quite twins in the end. There is a permanently attached wood bluebird in one of the trees. If I'd been thinking I would have put the blue balls on that one but I didn't think of it until later. You can see this blue aberration about halfway up the tree (red balls) that's on the left. The other photo is Mary's snowman tree. Most of the ornaments on here are brand new this year. Only four of the snowmen on here were really ornaments. Some are metal with magnets on the back meant to decorate your appliances. Roger drilled a tiny hole in the top of each of those so I could insert hangers. The majority of the snowmen are name tags made of thin cardboard. I had to punch them out of the a sheet. Fortunately these already had a tiny hole in the top where the hanger would attach. I looked and looked and looked and looked through box after box after box after box until I found the icicles. Mary and I both knew we had them, but they weren't in any of the places we remembered they should be, nor could we find them in logical places. The high school girl who put things away last year had no system. The Frosty tree topper is lighted as you can probably see. Mary has lots of wrapped packages she uses under the trees. She'll pick the ones with the paper that matches the tree theme, hence you can see these all have snowmen or are as white as snow.

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Trees 2
by Effie in the desert 10 Dec '16

10 Dec '16

Please first read my message in the reply to Todd's email about TTC 2016. These photos are two sides of the International tree. It's the same tree, location, and ornaments that were on it last year. There's not much to say about it. Maybe I should point out that all these photos were taken before the final setup and decorating was done. In some of them you're seeing junk in the background that isn't there during the event.

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Trees 1
by Effie in the desert 10 Dec '16

10 Dec '16

Please first read my message in the reply to Todd's email about TTC 2016. These four photos are different sides and parts of the same tree. It's the seven foot tall one and is covered with many different kinds of hand made ornaments, hence Mary calls it "Handmade". Some of these are ornaments that are made in the crafts area by kids during the TTC event. Others were wooden, dough, fabric, and some "store bought" made to appear handmade. In the photo titled Handmade-2 you'll see a large Santa ornament on the left side. He's standing in front of a wad of lights that don't work. This is the tree that I did on my own last year. After I'd put lights on it, part of one of the strings quit. Rather than take them all off and restring them, I wadded them into a ball and tied it together with twine. It was on the back of the tree last year. This year it ended up right in front so I put Santa where I did to cover the ugliness. I wonder if anyone noticed. In the photo Handmade-3 on the right side under the big white snowman is a square of wood. This is one of the non-working train whistles. When we have defective toys in the gift shop Mary often re-purposes them as Christmas ornaments. A good share of these whistles were poorly made. I had to figure out a way to hang them on the tree. I found some old fashioned narrow ribbon in a box that worked. I found the bag and reel of twist ties I'd been searching for AFTER I was done.

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TTC 2016 -- only two weekends left!
by Todd Andrews 10 Dec '16

10 Dec '16

Hi Effie, Is it too late for you to take photos of the trees this year?

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Hilarity
by Effie in the desert 06 Dec '16

06 Dec '16

I know Bruce & Todd don't watch television. I'm not sure about Chuck. I have to share this. I laughed my head off when I realized what they'd done. I'm finding it isn't nearly as funny in the telling. I watched a four part television program that was a crossover between four CW network shows. It started with Supergirl, continued on Flash, then Arrow, and concluded on Legends of Tomorrow. It was broadcast over the course of 4 successive nights. One of the actors on Legends is Brandon Routh. He plays DC Comics character Atom (Ray Palmer) on Legends. Near the end of the crossover as all the heroes were gathered and in civilian clothes, Kara, in a black dress with a white collar and with her "disguise" glasses and her hair in a ponytail walks by Ray and Felicity. Felicity, who is always seen in glasses, a ponytail and a dress, said "It's like looking in a mirror". Then Ray said, "She kind of looks like my cousin." I lost it. Maybe his stint as Superman wasn't as popular as others, but that doesn't make the comment any less funny. At least to me. Effie

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Fantastic Beasts
by Effie in the desert 02 Dec '16

02 Dec '16

I saw it today. It was good. Since it was written by JKR it melds seamlessly into the Wizarding world we've come to expect. New words to learn: No-maj and MACUSA, but old familiar bowtruckles, and spells cast as naturally as one would expect with no need for explanation. It is set in 1926 New York. Given the era of Prohibition you had to expect the Wizarding version of a Speakeasy. Think the cantina scene in Star Wars. ;) It started with a montage of Wizarding newspaper articles. There's no way one can take them all it, but it does give some sense of the world you're about to enter. Johnny Depp? I didn't expect him in the cast. The inclusion of the character he played leaves this open for more movies. It was both funny (especially at the beginning) and serious. One character who was killed surprised me. One of the previews that was shown "The Space Between Us" looks really good. The first human born on Mars travels to Earth for the first time, experiencing the wonders of the planet through fresh eyes. He embarks on an adventure with a street smart girl to discover how he came to be.

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How's Snape?
by Chucksim 03 Nov '16

03 Nov '16

Effie, have you read the Snape book? Wondering if you thought it worth reading, confirmed your feelings, or added new insights. I enjoyed it myself. Chuck

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Columbia and Snake Rivers Voyage | National Geographic Expeditions
by Effie in the desert 24 Oct '16

24 Oct '16

When I drove through the gorge yesterday I saw a large ship docked in The Dalles. It looked like a "tiny" cruise ship. All I could read on it as I passed it was National Geographic. I looked it up today and found this link. People are paying thousands of dollars to see what we have in our backyard. I had no idea. http://www.nationalgeographicexpeditions.com/expeditions/columbia-snake-riv…

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