Ever ones for tradition around here, Jennifer and I put up our Christmas tree very recently. I know, older tradition recommends putting up the tree on Christmas Eve itself, but we’re not that traditional. Partly it was procrastination, party we just aren’t all that into the Christmas spirit this year (see an earlier post I wrote where I discussed my feelings about the season), and partly we just weren’t sure we wanted the hassle of continually picking up ornaments that the cats had liberated from the tree to the floor.

But then we saw a show on Discovery+ (which we got specifically for the holiday baking shows). I forget the name of the show, but they did mention that “theme trees” are all the rage right now, the latest craze, the “in” thing. One tree that a pair of decorators came up with was particularly of interest to us, so we decided to replicate it.

So here you go:

(click to embiggen)

Yes, we put eyeballs on the tree. It wasn’t entirely like the tree we saw on television — that one had larger eyeballs, hand painted, and some of them were on servos so they could spin about. If I were engineeringly inclined, I’d do the same, but I’m not.

Turns out you can buy lots of things on Amazon, and even though I don’t trust or like Amazon, I do a lot of shopping there. You can get a package of 150 table tennis balls and a package of 300 small googly eyes for less than $30 total, and a bunch of ornament hooks at your local CVS for less than $2. So we put up the tree one evening, then spent another evening gluing googly eyes to table tennis balls and installing hooks. The above is the result.

Need a closer look?

Jennifer has dubbed this tree “Eye’ll Be Home for Christmas”, and I like it. I couldn’t think of anything cosmic horror-ish to name the tree, so I’m going with Jennifer’s suggestion. I do like the idea that it’s a tree Santa would approve of, since he could probably install a wireless hotspot in the tree and add receivers and transmitters to each eyeball, et viola, the ultimate Santa Spy Tree.

You’re welcome.

And Merry Christmas.

Deck Those Halls with Holidailies