Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Hang a Shining Star Upon the Highest Bough

Our tree looks pretty magical, but when you get up close, you can find some truly odd stuff hanging on it.

Some of my favorite ornaments...

Yes, that's a camel hanging near the top of the tree. Apparently, my grandfather played with it when he was little. We do a lot of the tie-a-string-to-something-and-make-it-an-ornament sort of thing in my family. I love him (he's even got fur!).

There are small paper snowflakes all over our tree saved from when we lived in Scotland. We couldn't spend much money on Christmas ornaments we weren't going to bring back, so I was really creative with our decorations that year. I don't know how long these will last, but I love seeing them on the tree every year. I didn't bring back the gold spray-painted holly leaves and pinecones that we also had on our tree there, though I did cave and buy three etched glass balls like the one on the right from the place where I worked in Scotland. I don't know why we sold them at our little tenement museum shop on the Royal Mile, but I love them.

Possibly it's a little known fact that when I lived in Indianapolis I was an elf at Christmas time. This ornament was hand-carved by Santa for me just before he moved to Florida and I moved to Chicago. He signed it "To Hanna Love, Santa" on the back. He was an amazing Santa, sitting at his workbench in the middle of the mall, hand-carving ornaments when we weren't busy that he would then sign for the kids. Every ornament had different carving on it, so they were all one-of-a-kind!

When we were in college, Nathan and I started giving each other one ornament every year (you can guess whose idea that was, I'm sure). Nathan's ornaments to me tend to be either very creative (cat ornament on the left has a picture of our cat taped to its face) or very odd, like the Mexican wrestler on the right.

My ornaments for him tend to lean to the sentimental, of course. I made the one below two years ago to memorialize our first Christmas in our first home together (that's our building).

2 comments:

  1. I love the Mexican wrestler and I love Christmas ornaments that have meaning. The hand carved ornament by Santa is very cool and you can use that to your advantage if and when you guys have kids. Nothing gets kids in line faster than letting them know you have a personal relationship with Santa. You have also given me an idea for a new blog post!!

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