The Finale of Elsa's 12 Days of Christmas (LokiHow?)

Okay, I've got good news and I've got bad news. One, the bad news is that it's the day after Christmas Day, (boooooo!!!) meaning it's the most depressing day of the year. And two, the good news. I've decided to keep my blog the way it is. Yes, I'm going to keep everything one year in the past. Why not? I think it actually sounds a little better if I did so, too. It sounds more like a story, that way, and I won't have to keep adding things in and recording people's words one by one to write a minute later. Plus, I have a great memory, so recalling all the happenings from a year ago should not be that difficult. The only downside to this that I can see is not being able to add in anything completely new and recent in my life, so I will just have different posts here and there, separate cutaways from the past to the present. Does that sound good to everyone? Tell me what you think of my idea. In the meantime, this post is the finale to my twelve days of Christmas. I didn't write much for this one, because after all the presents are opened and the food is eaten on Christmas day, no one really does anything. So I took and saved up a ton of pictures from the past few days to post here. I would say the majority of these pictures are the steps we took to decorate our tiny doll Christmas tree for this year. Yes, as in 2015. But it's only 2015 for a while, so... I'll let you figure that one out on your own. The other pictures, maybe two or three of them at the end, are from last year, with all of us standing by the tiny doll Christmas tree. Ready to go? Who am I kidding, you're only reading. I'm the one who has to begin the actual post. So let's do that, then.

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LokiHow: How to decorate a tiny doll Christmas tree.

(Get it? Get it? It's like WikiHow. I thought this was hilarious. Loki did not. Plus he didn't even contribute to writing this post. It was just me. But he did take care in planning out and directing as to how to decorate the tree this year, so we do get to keep the name LokiHow.)

Step One: Find the tiny doll Christmas tree. She dug up a this pink box out of the basement after a night of searching for it in vain. It was not in her closet. But no matter. At least we have the tree now. Just look at all of those goodies in there! Christmas tree: Some assembly required. What is this, IKEA?

Step Two: Take out the tree and put the base together. Our tree base consisted of a plastic cylindrical thing and three triangular things that stick out of the cylindrical thing to get the tree to stand up. It sounds complicated, but it was surprisingly easy for us. Except for the size. I had to do most of the big work like this, since I was the tallest out of the group, therefore the most capable.

Step Three: Dress the tree in a tree skirt. The tree skirt, of course, is always optional, but both of the humans' trees have always had a skirt, and it distracts from the ugly tree stand, so we put it on. There's a velcro connection in the back to fasten the two parts of the circle together, but the velcro is so worn out due to its years of usage, so it's pretty much impossible to put together. We had Nessa do this part, since she has the smallest hands.

Step Four: Stretch out those branches! Ha, I'm starting to sound like a yoga instructor for plants. Anyway, there's two conflicting ideas out there about what kind of Christmas tree to buy. One side supports real trees, being natural trees, they smell nice and are most traditional to use since the beginning of the Germanic (or was it Nordic?) tradition of putting stuff on trees for the holidays. But we use fake trees here, because the needles don't make a mess and there won't be any birds hiding in it. To make your fake tree as real as possible, stretch out each branch in a natural pose to make it look like each one is reaching outwards for the sun. All of the dolls took part in this activity.

Step Five: Tinsel! I don't like tinsel. I might even despise it. I might even hate it. Our tinsel is a long, thin strand of fading gold beads on a string. Tinsel, as you will learn or may already learn, always looks messy. I don't mind a good mess every once and a while. Mess can be healthy, actually. But this tinsel... ugh. It just didn't want to fall right anywhere. It looks sloppy and undone, because we tried arranging it three times, all in different places, and it still didn't drape the way we wanted to over the branches. We almost left off the tinsel, but we just went with it. Tinsel, as much pain as it is, is tradition on a Christmas tree. Plus we didn't have any colored lights or popcorn strands, so tinsel had to do.

Step Six: Ornaments next! None of them have to go in any particular order, but we went with the colored glass bulbs first. The colors we had to pick from was red, blue, green, white, and gold.(Or yellow, whatever.) So far this tree may look a bit awkward, but the bulbs really distract from that awful tinsel job.

The next ornaments we put on the tree where the nutcracker-character-things... I really don't know what the purpose for these were. Nessa, Benny, and Napoleon were all hoping that these ornaments could come to life, but they didn't. Nessa because they were one of her kind, ornaments, Benny and Napoleon because lord knows we need more nutcrackers in the house. The nutcrackers made me uncomfortable anyway. I wasn't sure if these little guys had been alive at one point, or if they were always like that, so I just let everyone else put these on the tree.

After the nutcrackers, we had more, possibly dead people with terrible paint jobs to put the tree. We chose a few of the best-looking ones to put on. I helped this time, because there's no way an almost two-dimensional painted clay mouse could have ever possibly been alive at one point. Right? Below is a picture of the line-up of ornaments that didn't make it on the strings due to an unsightful paint job or their strings being much to small to fit on a branch.

Next came the bells. Bell liked these the best. No surprise there. there were only about five to put on the tree, so we gave them all to Bell for her to do. I must say, she did look awfully happy flying around the tree trying to find the perfect spots for the jingling ornaments.

Speaking of this post's title being "finale," we all know what the finale is to decorating a Christmas tree. That's right, the tree topper. We had a pretty nice one, too, a big and bright shiny red star. I don't know where this was from, but it doesn't look like it fits in with our tiny doll Christmas tree set. I was actually given the task of doing to tree topper by the rest of my friends. I was awfully honored to do so, thinking that they all wanted me to do the specialist part because they all loved me, but then I realized a few minutes later that I was the only one whose arms could reach the top of the tree. Oh well.

And that's how you decorate a tiny doll Christmas tree according to LokiHow!

So those were all the pictures from this year. Lovely, yes? Also very vague. But I can't give away any early secrets of the future quite yet. Who will go and who will stay, if we get any new dolls or not, and how She changes as She grows older. Sorry, but that's how it goes. 

The pictures that fit into this post from this year are few, but nice. I noticed that She's family updated their family photo in the living room recently, so I figured we should do the same. Not that dolls can really grow or change appearances like humans can, but no matter. When all the humans were downstairs opening presents on Christmas Day of last year, I rounded up all the dolls I knew and had met since I was found and we gathered by last year's tiny doll Christmas tree for a family photo.

And because of that time, I now know why the humans get updated family pictures so infrequently. They are a pain worse than all of the tinsel on this earth combined. And none of us were even blood related! But I swear, nobody ever wants to get their picture taken and everyone will do everything they can to make your time miserable until the picture is actually taken. Just arranging everyone into a suitable pose by height was difficult enough. Nessa was whiny, Magneto would keep baring his teeth at the camera, Benny had no idea where to stand, and Idina kept fluffing her hair in sight of the camera like a diva. But finally, after probably a half an hour of struggle, we actually got a nice family picture. I still have it saved as one of my favorites. Not because of the memory of when the actual picture was taken, but because of all the memories I had tied to each member of our ragtag family. It was actually really nice. 

Anyways, whew. That was a lot of work. Well, not really. I just put on pictures and typed some text. But I'm tired nonetheless. Maybe I just need a break. I deserve a break, don't I? After writing the 12 Days of Christmas posts all the way through (I actually almost stopped at post six) and then I have all of these pictures for you here to enjoy. You guys wouldn't mind that, right? If a poor little, well, big, Elsa doll took a break from her blog for a while? The humans got off from work and school, so perhaps a week off wouldn't be bad for me. I just hope I can allow myself to rest. But with this new year's thing? I doubt so. Well, that's the end of this post. The happiest of Christmases to you. Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men and women and animals and plants and dolls... all that jazz. Enjoy your holidays, and I will try to take it easy here as well.

Having a Merry Christmas,

Queen Elsa