Moving out meerkats

The Christmas tree comes down for Epiphany tomorrow, so the meerkats have packed away their Santa hats and moved outside.

This Christmas season's two ornaments were:



Christmas ornaments for 2011: a Hallmark "Where the wild things are" depiction of Max and the great sea monster (a cameo character disappointingly omitted from the recent motion picture) - an eBay "Buy it now" purchase, because I can't bear to lose an eBay auction; and a bird-handled souvenir miniature umbrella from "Mary Poppins: the Musical", which played in Sydney earlier this year.

Previous entries include:

Christmas 2010

Christmas 2009

Christmas 2008

Christmas 2007

Epiphany 2007

On the twelfth day of Christmas

On the eleventh day of Christmas

On the tenth day of Christmas

On the ninth day of Christmas

On the eighth day of Christmas

On the seventh day of Christmas

On the sixth day of Christmas

On the fifth day of Christmas

On the fourth day of Christmas

On the third day of Christmas

On the second day of Christmas

On the first day of Christmas.

Memories of Christmases past

I realised a few nights ago, distracting my numb state of mind by resolving to put up the Christmas tree this year, just how many of the decorations were given to me by my mother.

Now, she knew of my annual purchase of two Christmas ornaments for my tree - which I may spend months looking for, then date them - but some years she'd slip an extra ornament or two into my Christmas gift, so the tree now has numerous undated "extra" ornaments.

Each one teased out nice memories as I set up the tree.

The other bittersweet find, when we were cleaning out my Mum's pantry, were the three boxed ceramic mugs that she bought, some time before going into the nursing home.

Christmas 2011 approaches!

I put the Christmas tree up. Decorating it was quite carthartic after the eventful weekend. Even though I collect and date two new ornaments for the tree each year, I realised how many extra ornaments I have, tucked into my Christmas gift by my Mum.

Of course, last year, it was impossible to put up a tree when the lounge room was full of dog cage!


Christmas 2011


Closeup on my customised Spock angel tree topper

This year's new ornaments are:


Wild Thing and Max


Mary Poppins' umbrella


Hallmark View-Master ornament from 2008, not a normal size View-Master!

I couldn't resist buying one more this year! This is a teeny, tiny Hallmark limited edition Keepsake ornament from 2008, not a normal size View-Master, but the 3D specialist mail order firm I deal with found a few in their warehouse. They are sure to vanish quickly, though. The three reels feature "A night before Christmas" in 21 stereo pairs.



And this powder blue Andorian koala turned up in the mail from an old "Star Trek" friend on Friday!

Have umbrella, will travel

Guess where I was tonight?

Max sets sail

DAY 9

My latest eBay purchase just arrived on the front step. Max sets sail ("Where the wild things are") in a delightful Hallmark Christmas ornament, just in time for Midwinter Christmas - and Book Week. Sadly, this wild thing - a favourite from my own childhood - was missing from the recent live action film. I really expected him to at least make a cameo appearance.

Christmas in Sydney, no, make that Nowra!

A last minute mercy dash to South Nowra - my mother had just come out of hospital and wasn't able to travel to the planned family reunion Christmas we'd planned for her, so I went down on the train to ensure she wasn't on her own - meant that I didn't get the tree out for Christmas this year. But that never stops me finding my two, new, dated ornaments. This season's two ornaments are:


A Hallmark gingerbread Noah's Ark (left), actually dated in very tiny, faint font as a 2009 collectible ornament, but I bought it the same week as finding last year's Christmas polar bear, which had a very prominent 2009 date on one paw, and was destined to celebrate the "Bear and Chook" picture books. So the ark went into storage, still in its box. The great SpongeBob Squarepants ornament (right) continues the "tied up with Christmas lights" theme already represented by previous years' Pinky & the Brain and Shrek & Donkey.


A closeup of Patrick, back-to-back with SpongeBob.

Previous ornament blog entries include:

Christmas 2009

Christmas 2008

Christmas 2007

Epiphany 2007

On the twelfth day of Christmas

On the eleventh day of Christmas

On the tenth day of Christmas

On the ninth day of Christmas

On the eighth day of Christmas

On the seventh day of Christmas

On the sixth day of Christmas

On the fifth day of Christmas

On the fourth day of Christmas

On the third day of Christmas

On the second day of Christmas

On the first day of Christmas.

Treemendous toy store memories

In the 60s, our annual trip to a big department store in the city was to to have our photo taken with Santa Claus. We didn't spend too long in the toy section - and we knew that anything we saw that we really coveted had to be mentioned to Santa, then it was fingers crossed until Christmas. (As an adult, it always amuses me to hear and see liitle kids throwing tantrums in toy departments and getting really expensive stuff bought for them, on the spot, just to make them shut up.)

One Christmas, Santa's grotto in Grace Bros was filled with old, gnarled trees (rather like the cranky ones that threw their apples in "The Wizard of Oz"), and my little brother was freaking out by the light-up creature eyes in some of the darkened, hollowed-out trunks. For several years, he refused to enter numerous department store toy sections for fear of meeting "big eyes"!

I ended up going to teachers college around the corner from that Grace Bros store in 1977. For three years, it was my daily haunt for lunchtime bargains. During one huge sale, they opened up a basement-level department filled with boxes of LP records, books, toys, etc. I suddenly had a very weird, nostalgic feeling and lo, behind a trellis partition were the same old papier-mache and chicken wire trees (and many oversized thematic decorating props from decades gone by!) These days that kind of stuff is alway rented, never stored, restored and created by a permanent team of department store workers. Another day, I suddenly realised that the guy who sat behind a booth, and made the regular announcements over the sound system every day, was the old store Santa we'd meet annually in the 60s! I also saw him on a TV news segment once: every year, he ran the Sydney Santa School for prospective store Santas.

A more recent department store anecdote: when Playmates had the boxed set of "Star Trek" action figures on the TV bridge, I wanted to buy a second set for customising. One big city store had created a basement level toy section (moving down from the sixth floor), and it was quite reminiscent of the basement toy grottos of old. I watched the price stay high on one last boxed set, then it disappeared. I'd waited too long. Then they had a massive "50% off everything sale" and the set was there again. I took it over to the till and a young salesman watched me buy it, helped to bag it, then said to the young woman serving me, "Those sets are so great. I've got one for me, put aside in the back room."

My parting memory is of his stunned and disappointed face when she said, "That is the one from the back room."

180 degree angel

Ah, I forgot about this photo, taken while window shopping in a Brisbane suburb over Christmas!

It seems to be a Christmas stocking hanger, but the shopkeepers have hung it on a string with other ornaments and decorations - yes, at a 180 degree angel.

Christmas approaches

Christmas trees at Central railway station. 17 December, 2009.

You can tell that Christmas is on its way. Just before I took this gorgeous shot yesterday, I was notified by my credit union that my credit card had been counterfeited and someone had cleaned out my account over two days! The credit union has reimbursed my account balance already, but it still feels like I've been violated. The paperwork I must now fill out is annoying beyond belief. The Christmas season tends to bring out the best and the worst in society. Sigh.

What's worse, I realised today exactly where I was when the card information was duplicated! The police and credit union have said these these cases are so prevalent they are highly unlikely to be investigated the way a murder would be investigated. So now I have to decide if I approach the (very large) shop concerned... Will the management actually listen to my suspicions? I wonder...


Christmas tree decorations for 2009. 18 December, 2009.

Customised "Bear and Chook" ornament - note the Santa hat on Chook's tail. They will share a branch this year with a collectible Mr Hankey the Christmas Poo ornament, from the animated TV series, "South Park".

That was the week that was

Stunning flowers fill the gardens around the base of old palm trees in the war memorial park halfway along the shopping centre on High Street, in Penrith. 16 November 2009.



Jack takes "Tiger" to bed. Yes, the current "tiger" is actually a sheepskin platypus. Poor confused dog. 17 November 2009.



These hardy flowers are in numerous commercial stores' flower beds in Penrith. 18 November 2009.



Christmas decorations at the Queen Victoria Building (QVB) in the Sydney CBD. 19 November 2009.



Home customised "Bear and Chook" Christmas ornament. 20 November 2009.



Alien invasion of my bedroom. These little guys are from the "Toy Story" series of Pixar animated films, of course. The one on the mauve base is a very annoying talking night light. The other foreground alien is a bootleg battery operated toy from a bargain importer. The alien teddy is one of those collectible Japanese bears. 21 November 2009.



Jack finally meets Wishbone at Mash cafe in Glenbrook. They were surprisingly well behaved while we ate breakfast. 22 November 2009.

Epiphany 2009 - and down it comes...

Two friends called in yesterday, and that means that somebody beyond this household actually saw - in person - that I really had decorated for Christmas! And today, down it all comes for another year.

You know, I really miss the smell of real pine needles but, not having a car - and only actually seeing one real tree on sale this year at the local fruit shop - plastic Christmas trees are just too convenient. Maybe one year...

This season's two ornaments were:


Christmas 2008: The felt koala riding a seahorse is one of my new Christmas ornaments, purchased from a souvenir shop in Circular Quay, Sydney, one day last January while heading around the harbour to the Sydney Opera House. The other features the three main characters (Fry, Leela and robot Bender) from the "Futurama" animated television show. They originally came in a boxed set, bought several years ago from Kinokuniya bookshop, in a year when I simply couldn't resist them - despite already having bought my "Superman Returns" ornament. I glued the characters around a mirrored disco ball ornament, essentially to consolidate them as one item, after Bender's leg broke and I figured that all three figures needed some support.

Previous entries include:

Epiphany 2008

Epiphany 2007

On the twelfth day of Christmas

On the eleventh day of Christmas

On the tenth day of Christmas

On the ninth day of Christmas

On the eighth day of Christmas

On the seventh day of Christmas

On the sixth day of Christmas

On the fifth day of Christmas

On the fourth day of Christmas

On the third day of Christmas

On the second day of Christmas

On the first day of Christmas.

Packing up Christmas each year always reminds me of my dear friend and former work colleague, Patsy. She doesn't even undecorate her artificial tree any more; just wraps it up in a huge plastic dropsheet, four corners tied at the top, and bundles it off to her back shed. It was a ritual originated by panic one year, when her Easter dinner guests were pulling up in their car, and she realised the house still had evidence of the previous year's Christmas cheer! The next December, the same guests were arriving... and with one tug of a ribbon: instant Christmas!

Cocoon cow

My 1995 cow angel ornament's ceramic wings broke when it was being removed from the Christmas tree in January 2007 so I had to make a repair. The new silver sequined and feathery wings belonged to a craft shop butterfly, which was on special in last year's January sales. The packet has been sitting unopened in my Christmas decorations ever since. Cost: $1.

A metamorphosis!

Cow angel originally looked like this:

Decorating the outdoor room

I'm just back in from decorating the big pine tree in the back garden for the festive season. I had to make two trips up the ladder; I realised on one of the very last small baubles that tubes of Christmas balls from the bargain shop (@ $4 per tube of twelve) are not going to have a high level of quality control. One bauble was missing a string, and several others had to be retied - but I ended up gluing all of their plastic connectors, even though they were already on the tree, since the summer sun is bound to make the plastic brittle and they were only clipped into place.

The larger balls are sequined, and were only $1 this morning at The Christmas Cave's massive sell-out. Not much of a range left, but these balls will probably last okay. If they don't get blown over the fence. The previous batch of outdoor Christmas decorations lasted about three annual outings.

At least this year I didn't step back from the ladder to admire my handiwork when I was finished. Yep, straight in the pool that year... - wallet and all.



Sunday's not so magic number: 95.5 - 'Tis the season to be naughty.

Monkeying around

From out of the blue (pun intended), I received a wonderful email this week!

An Internet friend from USA, Lori Custer, contacted me to say:

"Hope this finds you well! I went and checked out your websites, did a bit of reading up about you, and decided that you needed a little Therin [the Andorian], to go with your 'Lori Custer Monkey' collection. You now have three; that makes it a collection!



"All I need from you, is your mailing address, I`ve lost it, and I will get the little critter in the mail to you.

"There are a couple 'additions', but they will help him, not hinder, in his adventures. The 'tail' is equipped with the same 'feelers' they have on their heads, giving them a great advantage when being preyed upon from behind!

"The best to you this holiday season, Lori.

PS. I have enclosed a couple of snapshots, at his insistence... he is a bit of a ham..."
You're telling me, Lori!

What an amazing surprise! I lost contact with Lori not long after our eBay transactions were settled, but I found her again two Christmases ago when providing links to her sock monkey eBay projects. And then, this week, the email notification that something was on its way!



The miniature skateboard-riding Lori Custer sock monkey (above) was bought in an eBay USA auction in 1999, and is actually made from baby-sized "red heel" socks. The purchase started out as a joke when I was demonstrating to some colleagues (at the Scan office, where I was the editor) just how eBay auctions worked, and we all fell in love with this particular one. I decided he'd be perfect as a Christmas ornament for my tree that year. Note how he is hanging next to two M&Ms: "the candy of the Millennium".

Winning that eBay auction was fun, but the day the perfectly wrapped box arrived at Scan was a highlight of a great communal Internet adventure.

A few months later, when the creator, Lori, realised she'd overcharged me on postage, she sent me out a second miniature sock monkey for free: an editor sock monkey, blue pencil tucked over one ear, wearing spectacles, and working away at a tiny computer (below):



I have no idea what size sock monkey little simian Therin is, but it'll be fun (and frustrating) waiting to find out!

Up 'n' go art

I've been passing this work-of-art-in-progress now for several years. Located in the front garden of a row of industrial shopfronts on Coreen Avenue, Penrith, someone has been diligently hanging their empty "Up 'n' Go" instant breakfast drinks in the tree.

At first the tree reminded me, very much, of a bush in the yard of my cousin's house in Bargo. She discovered it full of used teabags one day, only to realise the ornamentation was due to her husband "decorating for Christmas" (Read: chucking his used teabags into the tree, for mischief, mainly).

The Penrith version of this art form features "Up 'n' Go" packets, which are threaded on wire - so there's been a great deal more planning than impromptu chucking. Simply marvelous urban art.

I took the pic on my way home from today's Pieroth wine-tasting harbour cruise. It semed like such a looooong walk... Hic!

Sunday's magic number: 94.0 - Sigh...

Back - and down it all comes

Well, it's Epiphany - the 12th day of Christmas - the day when we are supposed to strip the house of Christmas cheer, beating the chain stores as they prepare to put out chocolate Easter eggs, and commiserate over all the broken New Year's Resolutions. More on those later?

Before I disassemble the tree, here are my two ornaments - dated, as per usual - for Christmas 2007:



Christmas ornaments for 2007: a snowman in a light bulb - literally, a "snow globe" - came from Penrith's Target store in the January sales of 2007, and kept hidden away till Christmas, and a Hallmark "Shrek 3" figurine. He swings from a string of Christmas lights, with his pal Donkey under his arm. This ornament came from a Perth Target store during my vacation last October.

A bonus this year were 25 little glow-in-the-dark cherubs. I originally saw this in a Penny Miller catalogue, but they were about $19.95 for 50 cherubs, and no indication of just how tiny they were. When I was in Perth last year, I saw packets of them in a $2 shop ... for just $2 for 25. A bargain! Except that: when do you ever have all the lights out in a room with a Christmas tree? The cherubs can't glow in the daytime, of course, so I got to see them glow for about 30 seconds each night when I turned off the lights and headed to bed. Way to glow, cherubs!



I have lots of news from my recent holiday to Brisbane but, as each day creeps/flies by, the anecdotes seem to become a little less compelling, or less essential to tell when there are so many new things to talk about. Suffice to say that I must mention that I owe Virgin Blue a big thank you for letting my new (extra) bag onto my flight when I was running late. After seeing all those poor, angry, frustrated easyJet customers and workers on the UK TV show, "Airline", I was expecting a similar embarrassing scene, but all was calm and cool!

Sunday's magic number: 91.9 - Drat. Creeping up, even though I thought I was being fairly ruthless. Ah well, this week last year was like the beginning of the end, so tougher rules will have to apply from now on. There's still so much Christmas food around the house, though, and people gave chocolate, too. Sigh.

Lighten up?

A collector friend asked, re Hallmark light-up Christmas ornaments: "Would tampering with the original wiring be destructive to the collecting value?"

Do you intend to sell them?, I wondered aloud.

Anyone buying such rewired ornaments will have their own agenda and they'll only be satisfied they've been rewired if they still work and they plan to use them exactly the same way. for some people, you rewiring them would increase the collectability because they won't need to do it.

Anyone seeking MIMP (mint in mint packaging) collectibles won't want your ornaments. They'll look elsewhere. Anyone wanting something pristine won't even be happy knowing you've hung your ornaments every Christmas for a decade before selling them, if they can find sealed, MIMP ornaments elsewhere.

Collectibles are always worth only what someone else is willing to pay for them. Selling them at a good priced depends on waiting for the right buyer with the right cash at the right time. Sometimes the planets align and you make a fortune (and then someone else will brand you a scalper!). Sometimes you're stuck with something you can't even give away. Sometimes people DO give things away, to a charity shop, and then some canny collector buys it from there, puts it on eBay and HE makes the fortune.

Luck, skill, patience, intuition, research, advertising, reputation... And hundreds of other factors.

The heading Lighten up also applies to the latest "Harry Potter" film, "The Order of the Phoenix", which I caught today. While it was a visual feast, and the tone was darker, was there any need for the cinematography to also be dark? I swear, many scenes looked like they were filmed in monochrome. I realise that this movie is based on the instalment with the biggest word count but it did feel rather disjointed. Maybe this was a case where you needed to have read the book before seeing the film? (So far I've only read Books 1, 2 and 6.) It seemed a lot of second-tier character interaction had to be swept aside.

Hailing frequencies open: Christmas (ornaments) in July

Here in Australia, as I clean up the house in preparation for my annual Midwinter Christmas celebration, my penpals in the USA are scrabbling to find an exclusive Lieutenant Uhura (from Star Trek, of course) Hallmark Christmas ornament! Yesterday, the Hallmark stores were officially allowed to start selling the items in their 2007 Christmas catalogue.



Down Under, our Hallmark ornaments are stocked by Target Australia, but not until about September. Target is not permitted to import the light-up starship ornaments due to the different wiring, but when I got a Spock/Nimoy "holiday greeting" Galileo shuttlecraft via a comic shop, I tried changing the bulb plug on a locally-available light string (ie. unbend the metal leads in the ornament, remove the plastic base, pull a bulb from the Christmas light set and do the same thing; then take the base from the light set and thread it onto the metal leads from the Trek ornament; bend the leads back up and "Let there be light!" And sound, sometimes!).

It worked fine for about ten years. Sadly, a few years ago, the voice chip stopped working, but the ship still lights. These days, the Hallmark light-ups are independent of a light string. Alas, no Star Trek stuff, though.

I did make a point of getting the figural Star Trek ornaments for my collection, and they are in a glass cabinet, on permanent display, alongside similar-sized Trek character ornaments that were sold by "Star Trek: The Experience" in Las Vegas. However, after the great Hallmark Janeway figure - and coinciding with a move towards less-elaborate Star Trek ornaments - Target Australia stopped ordering in any new Star Trek figurals (maybe Janeway didn't sell?), so I've had to rely on US penpals to find me each new annual Trek ornament ever since.

This year the Uhura figural ornament is sculpted seated, and at her console, which is great to see, but she's extremely limited and I've been reading reports from several penpals on the misadventures they had yesterday trying to get more than one Uhura figure out of various shops. (Some places only received two figures in the first place. Other had about fifteen, but all pre-sold. One store insisted that an Uhura was only available with each $50 purchase of other Hallmark merchandise!) It looks like I do have one, but should it be such a chore?

PS. eBay prices for Uhura are going through the roof!

'Tis the season to be greedy.

Epiphany!

Today's the traditional day for taking Christmas decorations down. I was in the local supermarket yesterday - and, of course, the shops are already putting out stocks of chocolate Easter eggs!

As you've dutifully followed my virtual Christmas decorating ritual for these past twelve days, you've now earned the right to see my tree topper:



A US penfriend once sold me his collection of "Star Trek" character Christmas ornaments, originally from the "Star Trek Experience" in Las Vegas and - as I already had a Spock and a Picard from the annual Hallmark range - this new Spock, complete with Vulcan lyrette, ended up at the top of my Christmas tree as the angel. All he needed were some golden wings from Spotlight and a copper wire halo. This year I finally got around to customising the blue uniform shirt to make it reflect the uniform that Spock wore in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan", the film in which Spock did end up singin' with the angels. (At least until the next sequel.)



The next batch (below) includes some ornaments I couldn't help but purchase from the beautiful Ahwahnee Hotel, at Yosemite National Park in California. It was the morning of 27th December 1983, if I recall correctly and, after a sumptuous buffet breakfast, we discovered that the hotel was selling off its stock of Christmas ornaments. Okay, so I weakened. So much for "just one ornament per year", my original intention.



Clockwise: Stuffed fabric unicorn handmade by US penpal, Francine; Ahwahnee Hotel bargain bin cloth partridge (without the pear tree); Ahwahnee wooden unicorn/Pegasus; Ahwahnee wooden ballerina; felt Australian Christmas bells (wildflowers), a leftover souvenir/gift of Australia that somehow never found a new owner; and Super Pickle, a cool superhero clip-on I found somewhere in the States! (Every sandwich in USA comes with a pickle on the side, it seems.)




Clockwise: The "Rodney Reindeer" stuffed toy was very popular in that same San Francisco department store that sold the clowns (see previous blog entry); and some items found in my stocking at Rhonda's parents' house on Christmas morning, 1983. These all get put onto the tree each year: a Santa Claus pen; a little toy truck (Rhonda got girly stuff); a miniature picture book called, "Christmas Around the World"; and an aluminium Steadfast Tin Soldier, which was originally filled with unshelled peanuts. (Yep, five grown adults in a room, generating as much Christmas morning present-opening as possible.) The kazoo was sold by Farrell's Ice Creamery somewhere near Martinez, California, where I celebrated a birthday. The staff traditionally sing you "Happy Birthday", accompanied by kazoos.

Thanks for joining me on this virtual tour of my 2006 Christmas tree. Now I have to go pack it all away...

On the twelfth day of Christmas

Nearly there. Today's Christmas ornaments are:



Above left: For 1984, the bone china unicorn was originally part of a boxed set - of "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" character ornaments. I'd actually admired them in various shops for several Christmas seasons in a row. They were manufactured in Taiwan in 1974 from A Company Of Friends. I wasn't enough of an "Alice" fan in those days to want the whole set, but several individual pieces were really appealing. When it became obvious (in 1985 and 1986, when people kept giving me extra ornaments) that I'd be needing two ornaments per year, not just one, I decided to buy the now-sold-loose, and bargain-priced, unicorn - and then date it retroactively. I felt quite justified in doing so; I'd wanted him for years, and would have bought him in 1984 if he'd been available as a separate item. The ceramic teddy bear is very heavy, and quite posable, as the arm and leg joints are on elastic bands. I stood in the shop for ages trying to work out which was the most expensive, single ornament that I really, really liked. And the teddy won out (but I think he was responsible for breaking several branches on my first plastic Christmas tree). Both of these ornaments came from Grace Bros. at Roselands, bought two years apart.

Above right: For 1983, the wooden donkey was my first Christmas ornament. (I'd yet to move out of home, but was saving to buy a flat.) The donkey is handmade, from two and a half dolly pegs, felt scraps, wool and wiggly craft eyes, by an elderly Californian neighbour of an American exchange teacher colleague, Rhonda, with whom I spent Christmas of 1983. Rhonda had taught with me in my first year of full-time teaching in 1982. She took me into Elta's house in Martinez to see "a traditional American Christmas tree" - and it was hung with hand-threaded strings of real popcorn (preserved since the tragic death of her daughter many years earlier), gorgeous, old, blown-glass baubles, and hand-crafted dolly peg animals. Elta asked, "Which animal is your favourite?" - and this was presented to me, duly signed and dated by Elta. She'd also made camels, reindeer, moose, horses, and many others, from different combinations of the wooden pegs. Truly charming! The cute fabric clown was "the" special decoration of the year at a large San Francisco department store, famous for its Christmas displays - one entire floor was strewn with fake snow - and a huge toy department. They had several large Christmas trees on display that were exclusively decorated only with tinsel and these little clowns, every one of them of different colours and patterns of fabric. For several years, my clown played "tree angel" and was perched at the top of my tree each Christmas, until he got demoted by a certain Vulcan.