First World (Decorating) Problems

Last week when I was getting my Christmas decorations up, I faced a truly serious (first world) problem. My string of lights was too long for the shelf I was decorating! What was I to do? Double the string? Let them hang off the edge? I didn't want to just waste the lights, so I decided to create a little light jar that could contain some of the lights and give a little extra something to the shelf.

Here's what I used:

- A tall, straight vase (about 20cm tall and 8cm wide)

- A plastic tube that was holding some ornaments (20cm by 5cm)

- A bunch of straight white twigs

- Some little white snowflakes

- Silver/Turquoise ribbon

 I needed the inner tube to keep the lights contained, and the first thing I did was to do a test to make sure my little led lights wouldn't melt the plastic of the tube.

Once I had the inner tube in, I just dropped the white twigs around it, spacing them somewhat evenly. Then I added a few snowflakes here and there, and wrapped my ribbon around the middle. 

When I set it up on the shelf, I put a bunch of lights in the inner tube and topped it off with a pine cone to hide the wires coming out of the top. Now even with the lights off it looks cute. 

There you go! A simple project to deal with those pesky first world decorating problems. :)