It's fabulous!

(Course, now that you've talked about it, there won't be a Bonsai for a 500 mile radius of SF. Or anywhere, for that matter! LOL.)

Now, I want one too. Damn.

I want a 5ft silver tinsel tree for under $100... I will probably end up making one with a dowel, coat hangers and garland from the dollar store!

sarakenobi, Vermont Country Store has a 4ft tree for $89 (no 5ft though; and the 6ft is $139).

I like a lit, glittery, colorful, table-top, artificial Christmas tree because it won't block traffic paths in small rooms or require rearranging furniture. The price is relatively low and it can be stored conveniently. A creche can share the table top, and wrapped gifts can be displayed under and around the table.

I remember that tree so well...just the faux Bonsai alone was $700. Sort of like when Martha dressed up a cheap roller blind with $800 wallpaper. Crazy Martha, but how I would love to live in her world.
If you look closely at the tree (and you probably have countless times) you see it is color-blocked. Once again, Martha is out of touch with the average budget, but way ahead of a trend.
I think this could easily be applied to a regular old tree for regular old folks. In fact, I think it would be stunning. Might go get some birds tonight.

this is really cute, but I can just imagine some idiot seeing this and buying a real bonsai tree (which can be gotten for fairly cheap at big box stores) and killing it by coating it in paint. so my PSA for today is, please don't be a douche and kill really cool plants that could potentially live for hundreds of years, just because you think a small gold tree would look cute on your dresser for the next 3-5 weeks.

that being said, it definitely seems rich for my blood. I generally just stick with the Charlie Brown Christmas trees they sell (the bendy ones with the wooden X at the bottom and the single red ornament... I love them).

I have several small, indoor potted trees and bought two strings of battery-powered dollhouse lights to decorate them last year. But they suck the juice out of batteries in a heartbeat.

I'm going to have a friend wire them to an old AC adapter if I can find one that's the right voltage.

Fantastico on 6th St. in SF will have all of your holiday bird ornament decorating needs so completely covered.

Holler - what's the difference between killing a bonsai tree with gold spray paint and killing an evergreen by chopping it down (like most people do for christmas)?

k1tsun3 - Thank you!!!!!!

this would look wonderful if you could find minature decos of the 12 days of Christmas starting with the partridge at the top........

I waited so long to get a tree one year, that I didn't buy until late day on Christmas Eve, and for Noble Firs there wasn't much left except one missing so many branches that it looked much like Martha's bonsai. I bought it, laughing all the way home at my foolishness, and when I got home stuck a collection of birdhouses in all those missing--a--branch spots. It looked pretty amazing, several friends and family said it was the best tree I'd ever done, it never occurred to them that there were large holes in the tree that necessitated something as big as a birdhouse. So, I think you'd be surprised, you could really make a reasonable fresh cut facsimile of this from virtually any sized Noble.

As a teen, I visited a Christmas tree farm in Ohio during the summer. It was beautiful. It was interesting to think that, if some of those trees weren't killed to become Christmas trees every December, then that whole area would have been cleared to be replaced by something more profitable.

PS It was just one visit, but the evergreens growing as far as I could see were so peaceful and pretty that I still remember it.

That cute photo reminds me of Dr. Seuss illustrations.

@MsScrabble, the difference between killing a bonsai and cutting down a regular Christmas Tree is that a real bonsai (and NOT so much the ones that are new starts from "big box stores") are an art form that takes literally years and years of expert labor to create -- every year, perhaps more than once a year, careful pruning of roots, branches, needles (on pines), shaping with wire, fertilizing, watering, etc. must be meticulously done. They live in shallow pots to enhance the miniature landscape effect, and they dry out incredibly fast, so the watering alone is tricky, particularly since they are meant to grow outdoors in the sun and wind. Really stunning ones can be well over a hundred years old, babied like that from the beginning and ever after. Worth thousands of dollars. (So NOT good candidates for spray paint.)

Whereas, regular Christmas trees are planted, weeded, pruned a little occasionally, and pretty much left alone to grow on farms dedicated to growing trees as a consumable item.

I have never seen a fake bonsai in a configuration like the Martha Stewart tree. Home Goods has plastic ones now and then that could be decorated, but usually they are more of the "wind blown" side swept variety.

You might be able to take the photo to a florist and get some help fabricating one though. When I was a child, my mother made some faux bonsais with manzanita branches (from a florist) and dried sheet moss. If you were using these materials as a base, painting them, then decorating them, you might get a pretty similar effect as Martha's.