O Christmas Tree

Hi all!

We’re busy working on Christmas presents and Christmas goodies (aka TREATS) and enjoying this Christmas season.  I’ve wanted to share pics of my Christmas ornaments for a while now so I’m linking up to two parties:  Thrifty Decor Chick’s Tree Party and Flamingo Toes’ Ornament Party with today’s post.  I am excited to share with you my tree and some of my favorite ornaments.  {There are tons and tons of ornaments on my tree, but I’ll only share some of them.}

                                            

Here’s our 7.5’ Christmas tree.  I think this year is our 11th Christmas tree with it. The branches are falling apart slowly and it’s not pre lit.  Every Each year we say we should get a new tree, but we end up either buying new lights or fixing the branches… hehe…   Brent strings those 1400 lights on by hand every year… the set up & light process takes about 3+ hours.   When we decorate the tree we put on our favorite Christmas music (Bing, MoTab Choir, etc) and decorate it together.  I love decorating the tree with Brent. It’s so much fun and makes my heart sing.  Our tree does have some “matchy” ornaments and is mostly red, white, and gold, but is overall a “memory” tree filled with ornaments that mean something to us and have special memories attached.

The tree is 7.5' tall but it was hard to fit presents under the tree, so Brent built a stand which helps our little tree be nearly 8.5’… much cheaper than buying a new tree!  And the skirt drapes nicely over it…  Speaking of the skirt, we shopped all over one year looking for the perfect skirt to fit our tree and decor of our home.  Ultimately we landed at WalMart… $34 later we found the perfect skirt. {The only one like it and we’ve never seen one like it there again.}

Each year we get a few new ornaments for the tree.  This year I added some sparkly leaf branches to poke in the tree and some mercury glass pine cones.  {You can see the pokey sparkly branches in the tree.} I just love how much sparkle these add. I bought six but wish I had bought more!

Every time we go somewhere new for a “vacation” or “mini vacation” we buy an ornament if we can find one.  This year we went up to see the Golden Spike National Monument {on a mini vacation/road trip/date} and picked up this ornament.  We didn’t really go anywhere else “new” this year…

Last year we went to Massachusetts for my Grandpa’s 80th birthday and loved all the covered bridges in New England so we picked this one up at a gift shop that WAS a covered bridge. 

When we first bought our tree we needed some BIG ornaments {aka normal ornaments} because I had only had a little 3’ tree in college and before we were married} and we found these glass beauties at ShopKo.    I love that they have the “nativity scene” on them.  We also have not ever found more of these in gold since.

Last year my sister’s kids made homemade ceramic ornaments and sent them to us for our Christmas present.  We have three, one from each kid, hanging on our tree.  {A star, a tree, and a stocking.} I love them…

We picked this fortune cookie up on the east coast.  I put it on the tree to “bring good fortune”.

Our ornament from when we attended some events at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City.  We went to some skiing events {ski jump and cross country} and a medal awards ceremony.

This ribbon candy ornament reminds Brent of his grandma.  She always had those hard ribbon candies in jars at Christmas.  Brent always laughs about how they all think that the candy was the same candy from year to year {meaning it was never eaten, but always there}.  I think my Great Grandma did the same, lol!

This is one of my favorite ornaments… our first Christmas together.  My mom bought it for us.   {The shell in the background is from a fun trip I took to San Diego in college.}

I just LOVE this ornament.  I made it in the 3rd grade at school.  It is made from a plastic cup {the kind you usually get at wedding receptions and parties}, sharpie markers, and cheap plastic beads.  We colored on the inside of the cup with the markers, tossed the beads in and then put the cups on a baking sheet in the oven.   I was really excited when mine came out looking like a butterfly.  I have cherished this ornament.

This lovely glass ornament was Brent’s Great Grandma Stewart’s.  He said that she always had a white flocked tree and lots of blue ornaments on it.  We have a photo of the tree that we keep in the box with the ornaments.  We only have two and I noticed this year that one was cracked.  It nearly broke my heart.

This ornament is a new one for this year.  Sorry for the lousy pic.  I’m too lazy to go back upstairs and retake and edit pics. :P   This ornament has a lovely nativity scene on it.  {Did I mention that I am collecting nativities?}  Oh and hey… there’s some of those sparkly pokey leaf branch thingie.

This nutcracker ornament is one of about 36 on the tree and reminds me of the many (9)Christmases that I spent in Germany.

This ornament has a couple of memories associated with it.  It is one that I made when I was about 7 years old in Primary at church.  The silly picture is me at a church Halloween party. I wore my mom’s “nightgown” {uhm, lingerie jacket thingie} and went as a gypsy. LOL!  I wonder if she even thought about what I was wearing in public. Tee hee!  The backside of it is a felt Christmas tree.  I remember making this and trying so hard to get that gold ribbon perfectly round and to stick flat with that awful Elmer’s glue. I guess I knew even way back then that Elmer’s glue was not my favorite craft glue.  LOL!

I love these pointsettia flowers.  Brent’s mom made them out of wired, beaded ribbon and used some little red berries for centers.  I LOVE these and they are great for filling in holes in the tree.

Here’s a corner shot of the room.  I love my cozy little Christmas.  I wish we had a fireplace to hang stockings from, but they hang perfectly right now on the shelf that Brent built for me for Christmas a couple of years ago. The antique buffet was Brent’s Grandma Grotegut’s and is a treasure to us.

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you enjoyed reading about my fav Christmas ornaments!

Inky Smiles & Merry Christmas!