Our Christmas in the Park Tree!

Seasons Greetings! 

Have you and your family or friends been downtown to check out Christmas in the Park this year? Well if not, the next time you're down there.. see if you can find The San Jose Blog's tree! That's right, we've got a tree!

In November, I set out to create ornaments for our tree. As a photographer, I've taken a ton of photos that showcase various details, buildings, people, or events that make up San Jose and the surrounding cities in Santa Clara County. I thought these photos could make for some fun ornaments.

The Process

I went through my photos and picked out shots that I felt represented the area: the cherry blossom trees and street banners in Japantown, the Silicon Valley Roller Girls, San Jose State, City Hall, The Tech Museum, San Pedro Square Market, Santana Row, San Jose Taiko, and much more. I had them printed (FedEx/Kinkos, simple, on paper thicker than normal printer paper) and cut them out in 4x4 squares. 

Next up - a trip to Tap Plastics! I needed to make these weather-proof, and while I could have laminated them, I wanted them to have some heft. I bought 4x4 acrylic squares. 

Back home, I Mod-Podged the photos to the acrylic squares. My apartment was quite stinky after doing that! (I had to glue a sheet of cardstock down before applying the photo as well.)

After they dried for a few days, I turned them over and glued hand-bent wire hooks to each piece. Dry.. dry.. dry.. and DONE.

One last item was, admittedly an experiment, had to be added the day I decorated the tree itself. 

I purchased batteries and LED lights to place on the back of each ornament. My hope was the light would show up on the edges of the clear tile as well as illuminate the back of the tile too.

Added some sparkly garland, some small colorful ball ornaments, and a big silver bow on top - our decorations were complete!

Now, this may seem a little out of order, but the last thing I placed on the tree was the two strands of Christmas lights that were provided to us by the Christmas in the Park organization. For such a large tree, two strands really didn't feel like much, but hey, that's what we were provided!

Fast forward to the big tree lighting ceremony. They played holiday music and special guests including Kristi Yamaguchi and Santa made an appearance. After the giant tree was lit, my husband and I made our way to the TSJB tree.

Upon seeing it, my heart sank. Only one of the two strands of lights worked. Our tree was in the dark and you couldn't really see anything on it. 

But, there is a happy ending! While the lights were never replaced by CITP, they did grant us permission to use our own SOLAR lights. So we're not even using the PG&E provided juice for our tree! 

Last night we were able to replace the lights and now we have a tree with a ton of little twinkle lights! (We are, however, missing our silver bow.. lost forever it seems!)

Hope you can check out our tree and all the other ones in the park - there are some really amazing and fun trees out there! If you'd like to see more photos, including some detail shots of some of the ornaments, check them out here.

Here's one more photo of Josh and I posing in front of the tree!

Happy Holidays everyone!