For the last nine years our household has enjoyed buying a Christmas tree, decorating it (Kelley’s work), and then blowing it up as inventively as possible (my work delight).

This year was a challenge. First of all because we now have kittens, Charlie and George. They like climbing things, batting at things, and best of all, chewing things to destruction. So we had to get a big, sturdy tree they couldn’t tip over, and we had to put it far enough away from other furniture that they couldn’t leap directly into it. No tinsel icicles for them to eat and then to trail around the house dangling from their butt. (I speak from experience.) No crunchy, tasty little incandescent lights. No glass ornaments for sleepy humans to tread on. Eventually we found enough cloth and wooden ornaments, and bought new less-chewable lights, and just nixed the tinsel. Then after trial and error we figured out what the kitty tide-line for ornaments was and hung everything above that—except the lights, which we tucked deep into the tree way from questing paws.

So now we had a tree, and we’d decorated it. Next: go to my trusty apps to find new SFX to blow up the tree. Which is where we ran into trouble.

Some of the apps I’ve used before no longer run on the updated iOS. And those apps that have updated their software have not updated their gallery of FX. But half way down the second bottle of wine that evening I thought, Ha! If Kelley can decorate a kitty-proof tree then by god I can blow it up! And, indeed, with a bit of ingenuity—combining apps, adding filters, and editing in iMovie—I came up with a few things. Only two, though, involve destroying the tree. So here, for your holiday delectation and delight, are four heart-warming Christmas scenes.

Let’s start with snow. For this first one, in which Charlie is astonished to find two snowmen in his living room, I recommend you go to fullscreen to watch his reactions.

Then, eh, because snowmen are all well and good but snowballs aren’t exactly awe-inspiring, here’s the grown-up version.

Next, although I have yet to see Rise of Skywalker, we’ll be doing that in the next couple of weeks. Here, in anticipation, is BB8 finding out you should never, ever fuck with a tree with powerful friends. (How powerful? Well, here’s another example of the tree striking back.)

And, finally: dolls. I don’t like them. The only time my parents were foolish enough to buy me a doll as a Christmas present—when I was six—I used it as a hockey stick. Nope. I really don’t like them.

For those who want to see pyrotechnics past, go watch my Blow Shit Up! channel on YouTube. You’ll find many of my favourites there: the dragon, Darth Vader, the rock, a piano, dancing reindeer… Enjoy!