Friday, December 24, 2010

Bookmas Tree

Walking around after downtown LA after dinner last night Bill said, "Let's go to the book store and the art store before we head home, we are going to make a Christmas tree."

"OK," I said, as we crossed the street in the direction of these stores.

I told Bill recently to start telling me to do things and I will do them. It sounds a bit weird perhaps but I find that he comes up with really Good Ideas and I am better at Execution. This harkens back to a book I read earlier this year called Making Ideas Happen. One of the themes of this book was that projects are best seen through when Idea people pair with Doer people. Makes sense to me.

Every year around Christmas time my mom asks me if I've decorated for the holiday. Every year I tell her no, partly laziness, or more precisely perhaps, a lack of drive to put tinsel and Santa Clauses around where I live. I like the idea of decorating but not for tired out Christian holidays.

Bill and I browsed through the books located outside the bookstore on a shelf, searching for the appropriate hard cover book. After selecting one Bill took it into the store to buy. I realized we were in a Happening Bookstore. There was a speaker, I couldn't see who - it was standing room only, the speaker was located at the back of the store.



Bill went up to the man sitting behind the register and said, "I'd like to buy this book for one dollar."

"I'll sell it to you for 50 cents," responded the man, laughing.

"You drive a hard bargain but I'll take it," said Bill, handing the man his dollar and getting 50 cents back.

After seeing that the art store was closed for the night meaning we couldn't buy spray paint, we headed back to the apartment to begin construction.

Here's step one:



Then after cutting with an xacto knife you can spray paint it.



Bill and I went back to the art store mid-morning today and got spray paint. I had been insisting "Purple, I want to use purple spray paint!" I decided green would be better, if paired with this light, sort of peach color? I think it worked out. Or at least was a good first start, being as neither of us have worked with spray paint in quite some time.

2 comments:

Bill said...

That is one fine looking tree!
I'm happy to see more photos in your blog.

memeticist said...

This is a wonderful tree. And i also like the idea of pairing people who are good at dreaming up clever ideas with those who can manifest them.