W is for Weihnachts Tannenbaum

Every year I take loads of photographs of the tree as I dress it, and yet apart from the odd one here or on the Facebook, never seem to do anything with them, building a decent enough photographic record of the tree's development over the years, is all! So I thought I'd subject you to a few for the hell of it, and because having decided to do multiple posts today there's a need to produce the posts with whatever's kicking around on the desktop!

And because there's Toy Soldiers involved - if wafer-thin glass can be trusted to wear 'toy' as a moniker! "Elf 'und'safty mate, these 'aint no toys, roight, whachyerself, cutting hazard right there!"

This is the years additions to the family tree, we added a craft-built hedgehog last year, so I got him a mate, while drums and bears have always been favorites, indeed, the growing 'growl' of bears have put in the odd appearance here on the blog!

The soldiers are brilliant; they came from TK Max, and quite by accident, they had a set with a bear, and angel and a couple of other singles, but the only one I could find had a damaged bear (some hammer-fingered lumpty had stove his head in), so I went to a couple of other stores over the last 6 weeks or so, more than once, hoping for a restock, and while the bear never appeared again I did find a set of four little soldiers, 2 to me, 2 to the 'family' tree!

All four - being smaller they will fill the difficult gaps at the top of the tree where the big ones tend to look silly!

I also found these, but they were almost too big at around 5 1/2 or 6-inches, and the finish was poor (mostly hidden by the photo) with the legs streaked matt and gloss where the paint wasn't mixed well, and the hat's paint wearing-off, so I just shelfied them.

I found them in a place called Home Store or something (I'll look it up when I publish - Homesense) which seemed to be a TK Max subsidiary, with furniture instead of clothes, but the same household and gift stuff?

That's it for today, hope you had a good one. Starting tomorrow; a 12-part story of snowman-love!