Building Christmas spirit

When Rosie Scott showed her husband Jim a wooden Christmas tree she was planning to buy from Facebook Marketplace, he said he could make it himself.

And he did. But he did not stop at just one.

For the past three years, the Timaru man has spent hours carefully crafting wooden Christmas decorations, which have so far raised more than $7000 for Hospice South Canterbury.

While he kept a tally of the proceeds, Mr Scott admitted he did not think to record how many items he made each year.

Using pallet wood and ply, Mr Scott cuts out the shapes at Timaru’s MenzShed, then brings them home to finish them off.

‘‘It’s amazing what you can use pallet wood for, and you get the stamps on the wood, the grain, the knots, it’s all slightly different.’’

The first year, he made Christmas trees and reindeer, the next, he added Santas to the inventory — ‘‘they were a lot of work, because they were painted’’ — and this year, he has been making Christmas angels to sell, and is already thinking about next year.

Most of the materials are freely available, save the odd bit of glue or jar of screws, which Mr Scott considered his donation to hospice.

‘‘It’s just us giving something back.’’

Mr Scott gained a new lease on life in October 2018, when he received a kidney transplant, ending many years of dialysis.

Along with having family members in hospice over the years, the couple became more involved through the annual Rock and Hop, and Mr Scott also answered a call from hospice general manager Peter O’Neill to step into the role of volunteer handyman, spending Wednesday mornings at either hospice itself or one of the two hospice shops, tackling odd jobs.

Despite his prowess on the tools, Mr Scott is not a tradie, he is a retired accountant, but said he has always been prepared to have a go at things.

Work on this year’s batch of decorations began a couple of months ago, as Mr Scott liked to have them all ready to go before people started thinking about Christmas decorations and gifts.