Turn an Old Pair of Ice Skates or Boots into Beautiful Christmas Decorations!

skates_web2Christmas the Purple Stilleto Way

The First Appearance of Red Ranger!

Thanks to guest blogger, the Purple Stilleto for this post! She lives a comic book life of adventuring and creating. And occasionally blogging!

’Tis the season to be jolly . . . and creative! The Purple Stiletto’s favorite time of year is right around the corner and that means dragging out boxes and boxes . . . and still more boxes of Christmas decorations while listening to Christmas music (of course!). The funny thing is, I can NEVER find just the perfect combination of decorations. This year, to alleviate the anxiety of coming up with something great, I thought I would try going back to basics and use some of the most simple, everyday objects in a new way.

This idea came to me while going through boxes of winter sports equipment. I reached the “ice skate” part of the box which told the story of my childhood in pairs of ice skates. You see, for a while, my feet grew at such a rapid rate, I had to get a new pair of ice skates every year. Thank goodness I was not wearing stilettos at that time. That would have been VERY expensive!

Anyway, I remembered seeing a picture in a catalog once of some ice skates with pine boughs. Because I no longer had the catalog, I figured I could improvise.

I called my best friend, Red Ranger, to see if he was up for adventure. A silly questions, I know! We met up to search for the perfect green boughs for to fill my skates. We drove around . . . and around . . . and around . . . and there they were in a trash heap of brush—the perfect greens!

Now, I must admit, I traded in the purple stilettos for very stylish tennis shoes for this adventure. Apparently I had forgotten to tell Red Ranger exactly WHAT we were doing because he was wearing his brand new dress shoes. And there seemed to be an exceptional amount of mud surrounding my perfect pine boughs…..

With somewhat muddy feet and plenty of green, we made our way back to the Craft Cave.

There I gathered together my old ice skates, pine boughs, ribbon, tiny ornaments and pinecones. With Christmas carols playing, I tied the laces of the ice skates together while Red Ranger cut small sprigs of pine that I then stuffed in the top of the ice skates. I wired some tiny pinecones and ornaments that I tucked in amongst the greens to add color a texture. The finishing touch was a small white and silver bow with streamers. I hung the ice skates on an old rocking chair and stood back to admire the effect. For something so simple, it made quite a statement!

Later, as I was breaking in my newest pair of purple stilettos, I happened across a pair of boots that I had forgotten I had. The poor things looked so sad collecting dust in my closet! I decided to give them a Christmas facelift like my ice skates.

Boots-compressor

I grabbed the boots and made my way back to the Craft Cave. I stuffed pine boughs in the top and added a few stems of thistle that Red Ranger shed a fair amount of blood to procure.

Apparently he was unaware how prickly they are when he volunteered to jump from a slow moving vehicle to get them. I added a plaid bow with a single pine cone near the top of each boot and Voile! A-MA-ZING!!!!

That night, Christmas carols accompanied my dreams of beautiful, dusty boots and old rusty ice skates, swirling among giant sparkling snowflakes. The Purple Stiletto (with much sweat and copious amounts of blood from the Red Ranger) is well on the way to making this another spectacular Christmas!

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