Our blue Cookie Monster tree
So, about our blue tree...
You know how I told you we bought a blue Christmas tree?
Well. It was Lisey's idea.
She really loves Sesame Street characters; in fact, she wears Sesame Street socks to her job at Valvoline.
(Everyone knows that you can change oil better in Big Bird socks.)
Her boss at work obviously knows she loves Sesame Street, so he showed her a picture of a Cookie Monster tree.
She texted it to me from work, and within 15 minutes, we'd all approved of the idea and I had a blue tree in my cart from Wayfair. 😉
We have never had a fake tree before, and when we opened this one up, we were a little shocked at how scrawny the branches were.
And then we realized, duh! You have to fan out the branches.
The fluffing REALLY helped.
We added lights, a hat, eyes, and a mouth, and we were all set.
For the eyes, I bought white styrofoam balls and then I used self-adhesive black felt to make the eyeballs.
The mouth is made of foam board, and at first, I couldn't think how I was going to sketch a symmetrical shape for the mouth. None of our compasses expand far enough for that!
So I looked around the house for a big circle and I spied the bowl of our usual Christmas tree base. That worked great.
We did have to buy some new lights because all of our Christmas lights have a green cord, which looked super weird on a blue tree.
So we used two strings of these LED lights.
Since they're LEDs, and since the tree is fake, it's no biggie to leave them on all day. Which is nice on a dark December day!
Zoe had the idea to buy a chocolate chip cookie ornament to hang by Cookie Monster's mouth, so I ordered one from Etsy. It just hasn't arrived yet.
Will we use this tree again in the future? I don't know. I might try to sell it to someone else who wants to make a Cookie Monster tree.
But for the moment, this tree is fulfilling Lisey's Christmas dreams, and that's worth it to me even if we only use it for one season.
That was a good pick Lisey. I love Cookie Monster.
Cookie Monster is never a wrong choice.
Have you seen Cookie Monster's Twitter account? https://twitter.com/mecookiemonster?lang=en I love his daily schedule tweet: https://twitter.com/MeCookieMonster/status/1247533376560496646
COOKIE BREAK!
Oh my goodness, his Twitter feed is funny. I like the tweet about the Pantone color of the year—it looks just like his fur. 🙂
So cute! Me love Cookie on Twitter 🙂
Awesome! We did a Darth Vader tree one year with the mask and cape of a Halloween Costume. It was so easy - I didn't have a lot of time to decorate that year.
Just have to say that this is awesome. Definitely made my day as I would never do something like a blue tree. My husband would never allow it. But I love it. I am definitely grinning about it.
Oh and I guess Sonia's and Mr. FG cookies right off the bat. I knew Sonia's would be about clothes and Mr. FG is the only one who works/worked/will eventually be in an office that would know about ugly Christmas sweaters (not that he owns one, right?)
My husband is a mechanic, and he favours Animal and The Swedish Chef. It's a Jim Henson thing... we non-technical folk obviously don't get it...
Congratulations to the winners! One of these years, I'm going to get it right.
Beaker and Professor Bunsen Honeydew are popular around here too! And Sonia loves the Swedish Chef.
"C is for cookie" is now running thru my head.
That's good enough for me!
Maybe Lisey will keep the tree for her first home!
What a fun idea, I love it! And what a great idea for a family with small children or pets who would otherwise damage ornaments.
Shoot! I only got 2 out 5, but it was so much fun to guess. Shout out to Lisey and the Cookie Monster tree. It is adorable!!! Me love Cookie.
Love the tree!!!!
I love your tree!
Yep. Struck out again with the cookie guessing! 🙂
Love the tree. Kudos to you for letting Lisey have her tree. It's darling!
Hi Kristen:) Oh my gosh—thank you so much! I tried to email you, but there’s some sort of glitch. My husband did some sort of work around, but I’m not that tech savy. I’ll send you an email from my work computer and give you a good email address.
What a fun idea for a Christmas tree—it’s adorable! 🙂
I got your email! And your gift card is on the way.
Thanks!! 🙂
Love it! Who would have guessed how friendly a Christmas tree can look with eyeballs.
We went with a fake tree a few years back because of allergies - I didn't think I'd love it but I do. We got a tall slim "pencil" tree and just decided to enjoy its Dr. Seuss-ness, rather than trying to find the perfect natural looking tree.
I think the only potential issue with a Cookie Monster tree is that I might end up eating more cookies. (Just me?)
I've had a pencil tree since my single girl days in an apartment and I still love it. I appreciate the height of it without having the darn thing take up half of my living room. Never got a complaint from my kids about it so we have never "upgraded". With both of them in highschool now, I doubt I ever will.
What fun! Never saw a blue tree. I guess they come in many colors. Enjoy!
I had definitely never shopped for a blue tree before either!
If she wants to do a Big Bird tree in the future, I see that being more of a challenge. Heh.
Here's a bad idea for that: spray paint the blue tree yellow.
Now that I'm thinking about it, here's a better idea: spray paint one small branch yellow and see how it looks.
Here's another bad idea: for the wings, maybe you can take some branches from the under-wing area (about 1/2 way down?) and affix them to branches higher up so they stick out like wings???
Haha, I love all your bad ideas!
How would you make the orange legs that Big Bird has?
I eageraly await some more bad ideas.
Hmm. You need color around something long and skinny. For the long and skinny: long tubes (wrapping paper tubes?), dowels, or tree branches. For the color: tissue paper or paint.
Just some ideas. I find often that good ideas come from discussions about bad ideas.
Orange pool noodles
I have kept my losing record intact! I think I got one cookie right this year, and if I'm not mistaken, that beats last year's guess :).
I never would have a guessed Cookie Monster tree, either, but that is so cute. I've seen more unusual trees this year -- maybe with the pandemic, people just want to have something different this year?
One year when I was a kid, we hung real, decorated cookies, popcorn strings and candy canes on the tree. It looked so cute and homespun, but it didn't take long to realize our dog was enjoying it, too. Luckily she was a tiny chihuahua mix, so we just had to move all of the lowest decorations about a foot higher on the tree.
Meant to add, Kristen, do you not remember the trick in which you tie a string on a pencil and hold the other string end in place with your finger while you pull the pencil across the paper in a circle or half-circle at the full reach of the string? That was always our method for big circles or half-circles.
Ohh, this is a good idea! I don't think I've ever tried that before.
The tree is fantastic and I love that everyone was on board with having it instead of a "traditional" tree. Great job!
This is amazing--I love it so much! Both the tree, and your willingness as a mom to go for it! What great memories you are creating for your family.
Love it!! I think it's great that you're doing something a little spontaneous that is bringing such joy to your house!
It's so lucky that Lisey's boss sent her the inspo photo before we'd gone out and bought a regular tree!
I spent a long time trying to analyze each cookie and logically think through whose was whose and I got every one wrong . I love the Cookie Monster tree! We switched to fake trees 10 years ago when our last real one fell over two different times. It broke several of my grandmas antique ornaments and all the water drained deep into the carpet and smelled for ages (it fell over on the middle of the night of course). I loved real trees but the fake ones certainly have their advantages.
I have to say, I do really appreciate not having to water this one!
And I actually like that it's not pre-lit because I think this way, it'll have a longer useful life (even if I sell it.)
Our fake tree came prelit and a few years ago the lights started dying in places. We ended up cutting out all the lights and restringing it with new lights. It was a total pain and took forever but the tree was just fine so we didn’t want to get rid of it. So I would definitely agree that it is better it did not come prelit lol.
Yes, that's exactly what I worried about with a pre-lit tree! The lights are what will fail long before the tree will.
OK, that's just stinkin' funny. I love how happy Lisey looks. A Cookie Monster tree seems seasonless to me--will he be sticking around for awhile???
I figured I was right on the Sonia (fashion) and Kristen (phone) cookies. My daughter liked Peppa Pig best and my personal fave was Big Bird. Thanks for giving us some laughter.
BTW, your family is obsessed with putting eyeballs on things ....
Haha, you are totally correct. Eyeballs are all the rage at Chez FG.
Fake trees for the win! We had to replace the lights on our tree this year, but otherwise, it's still going strong and looking great 5+ years on. The tree, itself, is 4' tall; it's 6' tall if you count the weighted faux-pot base, which has proven cat-proof like we hoped. The passage of time has left us with only one cat, and he thankfully isn't interested in munching on the bottom-most branches like his siblings were. All the glass ornaments still go on the top 2/3, though! 😛
I think you should keep the blue tree and think of different themes for it every year, but that's just me. 🙂 Blue lends itself to fairies, unicorns, gnomes, pink flamingos, waves, night sky/constellations--whatever you want it to be!
I believe the world needs, "Ways to Decorate a Blue Tree for Christmas" posts. This could be a fun challenge each year. I mean... isn't there a blue telly tubby? (Is that what they're called?) or a blue daddy shark? Or... something similar? 😉 GROVER IS BLUE.
Love Cookie Monster Tree!! I only guessed Sonia's cookie. Sonia = Fashion.
That is one crazy tree. I'm glad it made Lisey happy.
Lisey + all the people who have viewed it on the internet now! We are spreading Cookie Monster joy. 🙂
This made me smile! Sesame street is special.
Clearly the Blue tree is Great, good job.
I would have guessed all those cookies right... If I had guessed. He ha
Funny tree!