A while ago Erik posted a link to an Instructable on how to make chairs out of scrapwood. William, author of that project, just let us know that he’s done a holiday Intructable on how to make a cute and quick modernist “flat pack” Christmas tree.
This sent me into an internet rabbit hole, wherein I procrastinated for a long time by reading about homemade Christmas-tree-like-structures. Two favorites:
1) The Mountain Dew Christmas tree. On one hand, I’m appalled to think that somebody actually drank that much soda. On the other hand, the structure is really nice and it looks pretty all lit up:
2) And the hardback book tree, made out of a cut-up book. The cool thing about this one is that the cover stays intact, so you can close it up and store it on your book shelf until next season:
Now, I know some people get cranky about book desecration, but even as a book lover and author, I don’t feel this has to be a bad thing. If you’ve ever perused the book section of a Goodwill, you know that there are books out there which could do with re-purposing.
My picks for the chopping block are celebrity bios and inexplicable runaway best-sellers like the Da Vinci Code and 50 Shades of Grey. These publishing phenomena are like biblio oil slicks, cluttering up shelves and choking out endangered books. Erik’s suggestion is Why the Real Estate Boom Will Not Bust – And How You Can Profit from It: How to Build Wealth in Today’s Expanding Real Estate Market …published in 2006. Written by David Lereah, the chief economist of the National Association of Realtors. (!) I’d say maybe that needs to go into a time capsule to explain to future archeologists why our civilization collapsed.
My vote for a book to repurpose is: “How to Turn Eighty Million Workers into Capitalists on Borrowed Money” by Louis O. Kelso and Patricia Hetter (NY: Random House, 1967).
They got their wish! It just didn’t turn out so well.
I like the inventiveness of the flat-pack tree and especially the soda can tree, although they lack the intoxicating smell of a real tree.
We here are traditionalists and trudge out into the woods each year to cut our own live holiday tree, which is decorated with glass ornaments and real (metal) tinsel from Germany and then surrounded by scat mats. Our youngest cat, now 16 months, will systematically un-decorate anything she can reach.
On another subject, I recall that Mrs. Homegrown is a fan of David Sedaris. Here is a link to him reading his “Six to Eight Black Men”, a hysterical commentary on Christmas in the Netherlands and hunting while blind. You’ll understand when you hear it.
http://americablog.com/2011/12/david-sedaris-six-to-eight-black-men-a-hysterical-very-dutch-christmas.html
Happy Holidays to all!
I’ve not heard that one. Very exciting. Thanks for the link!
Happy holidays to you and your kitties.
“Biblio oil slicks”–love it!
I vote to use Reader’s Digest Condensed Books for trees. Actually, a friend did that and painted them gold or silver, so there was no closing the book. He collected the RD books all year long just to destroy them. I approved.
Da Vinci Code made a great movie. I have no opinion yet of 50 Shades.