Steal This: Tree of Hearts!!

Although I love my job and I love seeing my awesome co-workers (hi guys!), at this particular moment I am terribly sad that I am in LA for work.  Because if I were home, I would gather up some Nashville friends and host a Tree of Hearts party straight away!

How beautiful is this!?

I’ve got to credit the photo and the backstory to one of my favorite blogs, Style Blueprint.

But before I go there, let me tell you how crazy the blogosphere can be.  The tree pictured above is just around the corner from my house.  Notice the sweet little twinkle lights?  Across the neighborhood and through the leafless branches, these twinklers had been taunting me.  Why?  We’ve joked in our house that we are cruising for a red neck ticket because our white icicle lights are still hanging from the gutters of our house, as if it were December 24.  Obviously, it’s February 10 and WAY past the acceptable time frame for Christmas lights.  But it has just been so cold in Nashville that the idea of heading down to our neighbor’s house to borrow the ladder, dragging it back to our yard, and pulling down those lights has been just way too much of a chore to even consider.  So when my hubby saw those twinkles from across the neighborhood and through the leafless branches, he decided we were in the clear.  If they can do it, so can we.

But a few days later when I drove down Leonard and saw how this home owner had augmented her white Christmas lights with hearts I understood that they were indeed not cruising for a red neck ticket as we are.  I thought it was super cute and my thief’s brain immediately got to chewing on how I could hang hearts from my gutter line to get some more mileage out of the white lights ritual.  As my mind’s eye shuffled through all of the store-bought heart options I could dream up, nothing really looked fabulous to me.  Considering that this idea would most likely send my husband up the ladder once again, I decided I should take a pass.

Until today.

Because now I understand that the heart decor is about so much more than just looking fabulous.  It is about being a fabulous friend and sharing love on Valentine’s day.  How do I know?  Enter Style Blueprint.  My neighbor’s blog featured this awesome post with the so sweet back story of a Tree of Hearts ritual that started in the northeast to cheer a friend who had breast cancer.  In the middle of the night, a woman snuck into her dear friend’s yard and hung hand-made hearts all over the tree to cheer her when she saw it in the morning.  The tradition caught on and now it’s an annual ritual there.  The house around the corner with the darling heart tree is a transplant from that very neck of the woods!

Style Blueprint is calling for this to become a Nashville tradition and I have to agree that it is fantastic and absolutely should.  They are even suggesting that a non-profit should take on the preparation of Tree of Hearts kits as a fundraiser.  Genius!  So in the spirit of blogosphere stealing, I mean sharing, I’m posting it right here even though my work schedule this week prevents me from participating.  But 2011 will be the year for my first annual Tree of Hearts party and you’ll have to tune in here to see the results.  Nashville readers, if you want to be on the invite list, let me know in the comments below!  For those of you who are in town right now, there’s still time to make it happen!

posted by Julia on Feb 10th, 2010 in Crafting, Entertaining, Holidays, Random
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