Walnut +Christmas Tree

(click to enlarge)

Today I had fun setting the tree up.
I have two trees I use every year. One is 20 years old and the other one is smaller and younger but I use it on my front porch.
Usually the indoor one I leave bare now that the kids have grown. I like it all with white lights and watch it turn in the front window.
It looks nice from the outside this way too.

This year I had a little fun.
I got a few little birds, such as the ones I have in my back yard and attached them to the boughs.
And I had a few clip on butterflies, so I clipped them on.
I found an old artificial flower branch so I clipped off the flowers and stuck them in.
The Cat in the Hat likes to stay in the tree year round. Once I had the tree full of these small stuffed toys but I packed them away and do not want to go looking for them.I want to make shelves for the toys and then they will all be displayed and used when they need to be.
Then I found a string of bells but I don't like how they hang on the tree so I clipped them apart and threaded them so I have many bells all over the tree.

But the most fun I had was with the walnuts.

The walnuts are so easy to open, I will never use a nut cracker again.
I used tweezers which I stuck between the two halves from the bottom wide side of the nut.
I twisted the tweezer and the nut cracked open, in half. Its easy to take out the insides from the two halves this way.
Then I cut a piece of thread and placed a piece inside one of the halves, leaving the rest hanging outside.
Then I put tacky glue on the other half and glued the walnut back together.
It looks as good as new except now I could hang it from the tree and no one will know it's empty.lol
I thought maybe to spray it gold but they look so nice natural. I am tempted to make more to hang.
They don't even need a ribbon on top.
I wanted to make some paper cranes for the tree but I don't know how to make them so I guess I will try to get some nice wrapped candy to hang.

I do have some nice acorns I can also hang off the tree but I think they too are packed away.
What I like about BC is you can collect so many acorns around here. They would look nice silver tipped hanging off the tree.

I got a Ginger bread house to make and want to see if I can get my son to take part in it. It used to be something he loved doing at school. and then at home.
I would love to keep the tradition going.
We do so little together and he is still my baby lol.

Well have a good day every one.:)

P.S. Michael Moores exerpt on Capitalism is enough to make you want to puke.

No one could explain derivatives to him lol

A Primer: Understanding Derivatives/trading in securities

Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit ...

She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar.

To solve this problem, she comes up with a new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later.

Heidi keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans).

Word gets around about Heidi's "drink now, pay later" marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi's bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Detroit .

By providing her customers freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages.

Consequently, Heidi's gross sales volume increases massively.

A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Heidi's borrowing limit.

He sees no reason for any undue concern because he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral!

At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert traders figure a way to make huge commissions, and transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS.

These "securities" then are bundled and traded on international securities markets.

Naive investors don't really understand that the securities being sold to them as "AAA Secured Bonds" really are debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb - and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation's leading brokerage houses.

One day, even though the bond prices still are climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi's bar. He so informs Heidi.

Heidi then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons. But, being unemployed alcoholics -- they cannot pay back their drinking debts.

Since Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and Heidi's 11 employees lose their jobs.

Overnight, DRINKBOND prices drop by 90%.

The collapsed bond asset value destroys the bank's liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community.

The suppliers of Heidi's bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms' pension funds in the BOND securities.

They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds.

Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers.

Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multibillion dollar no-strings attached cash infusion from the government.

The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, nondrinkers who have never been in Heidi's bar.

Now do you understand?