#109...quick holiday decor

This weekend, I hauled out my outdoor holiday lights. However, the rainy weather kept me from making the effort to string lights on my house, and I opted for the easy way out. I pulled out my large glass candle hurricane vases, loaded a strand of lights in each, plugged them in, put a decorative wrapping paper collar on each vase, and placed them on my front porch. It is pretty simple looking, but I think it still shows some seasonal spirit.
As for my indoor decorating, I am usually fairly minimal, but I did decide to put up my fake white tree this year. I wanted to put the tree in some type of urn-like container to elevate it, so I looked around my garage for something I could use. I found this old plastic trash can behind the garage. Tyler uses it to haul yard clippings around, so although it looked bad, it never really held any gross trash. I used industrial clippers and cut the handles off the can. (sorry Tyler)

Next, I decided that I would pad the can to give it less of a trash can look, and more of an upholstered furniture look. I planned to use quilt batting, but was out, so I used this silvery bubble wrap that I found in the garage (no idea why we have this material). I used my hot glue gun for this entire project, and after I finished hot gluing the bubble wrap around the can, I began hot gluing my striped fabric on the inside lip of the can, and stretching it over the bubble material and gluing on the bottom of the can.

Once finished upholstering the can, I stacked boxes and scrap wood inside the can, placed my tree at the height I wanted it, and then hid the messy inside of the can with some purple velvet. I thought the can looked a little plain, so I decided to give it a button trim, sort of like a tufted effect. I stitched red X's in the button holes for color, and then hot glued the buttons on. While I did succeed at disguising the can, I think it is a tiny bit big for the tree, which I think draws attention to the fact that it is a trash can. Oh well.....its up!
After spending about 2 hours crafting the upholstered can, I was out of time for actually decorating the tree, so to quickly finish my decorating, I opted to hang my pet's stockings on the tree. They are oversized, but balance the giant base a bit. I also had some cardboard gift tag letters so I added our initials to the tree as ornaments. Our tree definitely has an artsy, craft project look this year, but it is really the glow of the tree at night, not the tree decor that does it for me!