I will never be a match for Martha Stewart.
I already knew that, but I lent even more credence to that theory recently. I went to a store to buy some garland to put up on my porch, and some “garland ties” designed to fasten said garland to said porch. I also bought a couple of “Christmas sprays”. This was the store’s terminology, not mine. I would have called them “pine branch-looking thingies.” I was going to fashion these into a centerpiece for my dining room table.
About an hour later, I still hadn’t gotten the garland formed into a fashion that I liked. It was bitterly cold outside, and I was suffering from numb fingers trying to fasten the garland ties to the garland and the porch. The garland ties, made out of plastic, kept breaking when I tried to lock them into place. Each time one snapped, a little piece of my sanity snapped with it. I noted that the ties were “Santa’s Best” brand ties. I submit that if that’s the best Santa can do at making garland ties, he needs to outsource garland-tie making and stick to toys.
Finally, finally, I got the garland in a somewhat festive look. It’s still up, so I guess that the garland ties are doing their jobs. Well, at least the ones that didn’t break. But it was a lot harder than I thought it’d be.
Moral of the story: when you look at a box (or whatever it comes in) of Christmas decorations, resign yourself to the fact that you will either:
- Never get the decorations to look as nice as they look on the box, or
- Spend an amount of time roughly equivalent to a week per each of these you use to make it look so.
I had better luck with the so-called “Christmas sprays”. Luckily, these are for the most part idiot-proof. All you do is take them and place them opposite each other so that the piece of wire coming out of it (which, for some reason, is approximately as long as the spray itself is) is hidden underneath it. And lo and behold, there you have it!
Now don’t get me wrong. I still love decorating for Christmas. I just know that I’m never going to get anyone to pay me to do it. 🙂