Colour correcting a Christmas tree

Last Christmas we got a new Christmas tree. We had our previous skinny tree [as seen in this post] for 6 years, which we bought especially for our first apartment which was the size of a matchbox. Such a skinny tree always looked odd in our current living room, so last year I thought it was time to treat ourselves to a full sized tree.
I looked for a couple of weeks but couldn’t find a decent secondhand faux tree online, so we went for a new tree. I picked one out, we brought it home, I opened the box and immediately had an awful feeling. The colour was very wrong. It was way more yellow than a normal tree which made it look dead. A dead looking fake tree.

You can’t tell the true awfullness of the colour of our tree in last year’s pictures because I actually edited the colour on my computer before sharing the pictures. That’s how horrified I was with the colour. The feeling of dread crept up when I soon realised I’d be unboxing our vom-coloured tree again this year, but then I had a very simple idea – just paint it.

The above will give you a better idea of the colour difference – on the left is our previously Exorcist-Green Christmas tree compared to a piece of proper green garland. It may not look too bad here, but when you’re looking at an entire tree that colour, it was very obviously wrong. 
I headed to All City Graffiti on Crow Street last week on the hunt for a merrier green to spray paint our tree and found the perfect shade of ‘Amazonas Green’ …

That afternoon I took our entire Christmas tree outside and set it up / opened up all the branches. There was a light breeze, which I used to my advantage, and I used it to lightly mist the whole tree vs. spraying it with an intense stream of paint. Holding the can about 1 foot away from the tree I sprayed one section at a time, turned it, sprayed another section, turned again, and repeated until I was happy with the coverage. It was incredibly easy to paint in this way and I was finished in about 20 minutes [including drying time as the light breeze was again very helpful].

I’m really so much happier with the colour of our tree. The last thing I wanted to do was have to buy another Christmas tree as that would have been a complete waste and I’m very conscious of buying things unnecessarily, so I’m so glad it turned out looking as good as it does. It’s a proper Christmassy green now and it no longer makes me cringe when I look at it. Yay! o/

I put 2 sets of lights onto it this year [one plain, the other chasing lights] and I’m quite happy with just leaving it like that. I like the idea of just lights this year. Leaving it as a naked tree. What do you think? I’m going to add some sort of makeshift tree skirt and maybe some ribbon to the very top, but overall, no decorations. I just really like the idea of keeping things a bit simpler this year. 

From me and mine to you and yours …

… I hope you have a lovely few days lined up full friends, family, food, pyjamas, movies, sweet treats, as little squabbling as possible and nothing too inappropriate is said after a drink or two. Happiest of holidays friends, and I hope you enjoy it whatever way you spend it xx

Knock-off Baileys two ways

A couple of weeks ago the lovely Sadhbh of Where Wishes Come From asked me to partake in her #CraftAdvent 2015. I of course couldn’t not. I asked if I could submit a [boozy] recipe instead and Sadhbh was all over it. I wanted to try making a dairy-free and egg-free version of Baileys and figured this was the perfect excuse opportunity. So with my grandmother’s recipe at hand, I created a vegan version of it and YOU GUYS. IT’S SO GUD. Obviously, it’s not the exact, exact same as Baileys, but it’s soooo close. If you’d like to see the full recipe, head over to Sadhbh’s blog post here! Includes a regular version and vegan. So. GUD

I’ll be enjoying a glass this evening as among all the craziness that’s happened over the past 2 weeks I’ve agreed to do a little something for TV. It might lead to more. I’m terrified within an inch of my life so I’ve agreed to do one segment, see whether I like it [or curl into a permanent fetal position] and take it from there. Things will be a lot less vague in the new year, I promise! But for now, bottoms up.