The Valentine's Day Tree!

Happy Valentine's Day!  I'm spending today basking in the glow of the first of many year round holiday trees!  I have wanted to do this forever so this white tree was one of the many JENuary, 40th birthday presents that I got for myself.  Aren't I so sweet to shower myself with gifts like that???

I had originally planned on making all of the ornaments by hand and my head was swirling with cute ideas!  I was going to cross stitch or embroider or maybe hand paint all of the ornaments.  It was going to be epic!  And then I remembered that there are only 24 hours in a day and I only had one month to accomplish all of this.  Reality can be sooo annoying at times.

Soooo....I decided a much safer plan was to raid my stash of Valentine's paper goodies which I'd been hoarding for a few years and make things a wee bit easier on myself.

And even with the much quicker "paper plan" in place, the ornaments didn't get finished until last night!  Nothing motivates a girl quite like the last minute!

My cheery, sweet little tree is finally all dressed up and ready to celebrate!  She's happily perched atop a table in the corner of my studio well out of reach of Baxter's curious jaws!  This will definitely NOT be added to the list of "Things Baxter Has Chewed On."

And now I'm off to make pecan crusted fish with amaretto cream sauce, roasted veggies and a double chocolate silk cream pie.  Which will be washed down with one of the bottles of champagne that we brought home as a souvenir from the Chandon winery on our trip to Napa last month.  Yum!

Hugs,
Jenny

P.S.  If anyone has any advice or knows of any tutorials on how to take pictures of lit holiday trees using an iPhone, please let me know!