Let's Nativity! (II)

I'm pretty proud of my Nativity set. The walls are made up of Jenga blocks, and most of the pieces come from Kinder Surprise toys. There's a few exceptions: Cakey guest stars as the Angel of the Lord, and that monster from a Monsters Inc. Happy Meal represents either a) the serpent/dragon/monster that was slain by the Christ-child immediately upon his birth or b) just monsters in general.

This was a lot of fun to make, and it was surprisingly an exercise in editing. I didn't want to go overboard, and since I have over 100 Kinder toys, it would've been very easy for this to get out of hand. Note there's no Squidward/Patrick/Mr. Krabs trio popping up or playing the Three Wise Men, and I kept the number of identical ragged Shepherds to one (not pictured are the two goats and a donkey with him... and you can't really see the horses in the stables. Also, there's a tiny booger-looking creature known as an Ick sitting on one of the off-camera Jenga blocks. He represents a Nisse. And the Three Wise Men have three off-camera squires bearing gifts, which are a crown, a shield, and an empty pillow. I would've liked to have included everything but then the picture would have been zoomed out. Maybe I'll do some close-ups later.)

Maybe next year I'll go all out and display the whole of the Kinder Universe worshipping the Christ-child, but I'm pretty content with what we have this year.


And then there's the tree! A real, honest-to-goodness tree! I love it! I love the tree! I say good night to it every night. The picture doesn't do it justice, and I'll have to take some more later.

Seriously, getting a tree really upped the Christmas cheer around this place, and it makes me feel less weird for constantly playing that "Sounds of the Season" music channel up in the 600s. I love that channel! I love the tree!

For ornaments, we just own a set of six pine-cone rodent ones I bought in Florida, and I'm opposed to buying shitty ones (although I'm really into looking at weird vintage Dwarf ornaments and Disney ornaments on eBay), so we decorated it with a lot of little things around the house.

Examples: My graduation cord! Three very cute change purses shaped like monkey's heads. A tag thing or whatever it is from Tokyo Disneyland. Grimace. Two stuffed toadstools. A tiny stuffed elephant Sarah found in Times Square. A holiday card from 2002 (why do I have that? I didn't even live in NYC in 2002, so I brought it up with me when I moved here?). SMRT-1. A few buttons, and atop the tree is old X the Owl from Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.

Bringing back all these old, somewhat forgotten things makes me feel that this tree is more special than one filled with shitty ornaments bought at Target. And it's nice to be actually psyched about Christmas instead of that vague feeling of anxiety and disappointment, so hooray! Christmas!