Putting up the New Year tree. Oh wait, trees.

A Christmas tree. Of course. Everyone has one. A New Year tree? Not so much. Two NY trees? Say again? What's going on?

Today I woke up happy, planning a project that wraps up an event we decorated a few years ago. I'd painted 12 5'X12' banners to fill the enormous foyer. We cleared out a nursery, hauling 60 firs (or was it 80? 12'-16' tall@$6 each, burlapped) to soften the corners of the banquet hall.

I smiled this morning, waking to thank God for the wonderful women who roped their husbands into helping unload those tall monsters off the truck. We had borrowed endless white lights and gauze from a church, and helpers wound them around clumps of tree bases.

The table decor cost less than $2 each. How? As we looked around the institution's storage closet, the wheels started turning. Candles. Mirror tiles aplenty (cliche, or...) 

W and I went to the river and loaded up 2 buckets of rock. Rinse, scrub. Ready. We were due to dig the moss off our garden path anyway. The morning of the event, I got out a trusty metal spatula and scraped three big baking sheets full of lovely, green mosses. Our shopping list was short: 

• 2 contractor sacks of small round pebbles from Home Depot @4 each
• Several packages of wild-looking mushrooms from Uwagimaya
• 10 bunches of orchids (Trader Joes, a dozen stems@$5)

On each table, volunteers put down a mirror tile ("water"), piled a few rocks at one end, hid the other edges of the tile with pebbles, and surrounded it with moss. We placed mushrooms in the moss, draped a few orchids, and put the candles between. It looked very "Northwest." (Wish I had asked the photographer to take pictures for my file.

I brought two banners home after the event. They lay rolled up for nearly a year until this morning. 

W, who hates heights, crawled up the ladder to mount them in the living room. With his laser level, they're, well, perfectly level, and at the right height (5" below the drapes, which looks like the same height due to viewing perspective.)

Thanks, hon. If I can dream it, he can build it! What fun to share happy memories and art on one day.

What do you think? And what's on your weekend "to-do" list?

Read more:

*He has made everything beautiful in its time. Ecclesiastes 8:11 NIV

*Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously,   and he will give you everything you need. Matthew 6:33 The Message

*Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." Hebrews 13:5 NLT