25 Days of Christmas - Day 1: Alma mater trees

A few Thanksgivings ago, Dave and I were bored after cleaning up from dinner and company so we went out to see how many crazy people were actually out shopping on Thanksgiving Day.

Target was packed. Best Buy was packed. Garden Ridge was open but had a very small crowd, so we went inside to see if there were any insane deals. The first thing we saw when we walked in was a group of Christmas trees in really tacky colors - blue, yellow, red, orange, etc. My first thought was "Who the hell would put up an orange Christmas tree in their house? Tacky! Ew!" but as we walked around the store, and I saw the gold ball ornaments and garlands, the wheels started turning in my mind.

I had the idea to make a purple and gold themed tree to represent JMU's school colors, but Dave was not on board at first. So we went home empty-handed and I could not stop thinking about how cool it could look with some creativity and a little bit of shopping. The next morning I somehow convinced Dave I could make it work and I went back to Garden Ridge to get the tree and some ornaments, and then to Michael's to get some clear glass ball ornaments and paint pens to DIY some ornaments of my own.  That sentence had three ornaments. Ornaments.

The end result is this:

Once I enrolled at University of Richmond I decided to make myself a tree, too.

Every year we buy either a JMU or UR ornament depending on the bookstores' selections to grow our collection over time. We have a few school-specific ones on each tree so far, along with some generic ornaments that match the color scheme, like a Virginia-shaped red ornament I got from a local artisan, and a gold glockenspiel to represent my time as a Marching Royal Duke! #bandnerd