Got the Christmas tree up

I still feel gross today. I woke up with a horrid sore throat from sleeping (when I get sick, I always feel worse in the morning). Anyway, Nick had cleared out the corner where we wanted the tree. It had an end table with a fish tank for a gecko in it before.

After I felt 'normal' (and by normal, I mean less like crap), I started getting the Christmas decorations out. I didn't get everything out- for starters, I don't want any of my grandma's ceramics out, because of the cats. Once we got everything down here, I started a kids Christmas movie (Mickey's something or other- it has "Little One" "Chip & Dale's Christmas Tree" and "Mickey's Christmas Carol" on it), and started putting the tree together.

We got the tree up and the branches fluffed easily enough. The tree is prelit, but last year, we decided to add strands of red lights, because we were going with a red & white theme,  and it's lit with white lights. This year, we are just back to whatever, so instead of the red lights, I added colored lights to the tree. Now, yes, I realize it's odd to have both color and white, but last year, we quite often switched which color was on, so sometimes it was just white, sometimes it was just red, sometimes it was both. It looks really nice, though.

After that, I strung 3 different types of garland- 2 are beaded, and the 3rd is little round sparkly circles string together from the Dollar Tree. Those are all red, and the beaded ones are gold, red, blue, green, and purple. After that, I dug out the star, only to discover it was broken. The back had snapped off. It was a really pretty 3 D star- the front was a clear star with lines etched on it. The back was a larger greyish silver plastic with stars cut out of it, so stars would shine on the walls.

The back part was supposed to be removable, but it snapped off somehow, and is no longer removable, but just disconnected. We opted to glue it, only we had no glue, so Nick and I ran to Dollar Tree for super glue, and stopped at Walmart for some food odds & ends. We found the cutest ROUND Coca-Cola bottles. They look like ornaments, with a small flat bottom to stand on, and a picture of various Santa or Polar Bear things on it. They were $1 each, but I grabbed one each for the kids for dinner tonight as a treat, since they rarely are allowed to drink soda.

When we got home, we started to glue the star, and it wasn't holding at all with super glue. But I got gel super glue, so it wouldn't run. Big mistake. I effing hate gel superglue now.

The first try was unsuccessful, so we tried again, this time, getting glue all over my hands- and do you know what that feels like? Oh, so gross. I even got some under one of my nails. And then, we realized that we shouldn't have glued it at all, because that means we can't get to the light easily to replace the bulb, and we got superglue on the bulb.

We just removed the old bulb very carefully, and Nick tried to clean the socket area of any glue so it wouldn't be dangerous, and we're waiting longer for it to dry (discovered parts of it are still wet), and we'll try it, but I'm not holding out much hope. We may have to replace it. :( I really like this star, too.