My Favorite Ornaments

Decorating the tree is an event our family looks forward to every year. It's when we pull out the beat up box of ornaments and sort through our memories, picking and choosing which ones go towards the front and which ones are relegated the back of the tree.

When I was growing up my parents had a tradition of giving us an ornament every year, something to commemorate the past year. This meant that when I finally left home and began my own Christmas traditions I had enough ornaments to decorate a small tree. This also meant that once Wayne and I got married that my ornaments dominated our tree, something that was remedied by our doing this very same tradition for ourselves.

These are just a few of my favorites that bring back pleasant memories.

The music stand and the Coca-Cola ornaments. The first was from one of my high school years when I finally took a Class A saxophone solo to state competition and brought home a gold medal, along with a sundry of other medals. I was a first-class music geek, what can I say.

The Coca-Cola ornament was from the year I decided to get a degree in advertising. Mom couldn't think of an ornament that would be appropriate for advertising, and at the time the Coke/Pepsi war was big, with slogans and products everywhere. Her solution was to get a Coca-Cola ornament, because that represented advertising to her. I think of how hard she thought about and looked for these special ornaments throughout the years and I have a great appreciation for the effort she put into finding just the right one.

The moose ornaments are just a couple of many that I've gotten over the years from my dad. My dad's nickname for me is "Tootermoose," a name he made up that he started calling me when I was a kid. Nearly every year I can count on a moose making an appearance in a large box of gifts for my family from my dad. They make us all laugh every time.

And then there's the hand crafted ornament commemorating the fact that Lindsey was on her way. We had already been through two miscarriages and didn't tell my family we were expecting until Christmas when I was nearly 5 months along. Wayne bought the ornament and had it personalized long before Christmas so I could open it at my folks' house on Christmas Day. The purchase of this ornament was a leap of faith for both of us; it was a symbol of hope that perhaps this time we really would become parents. And miraculously enough, we did.

When I was a kid I used to look at the decked out trees at the store, the ones with every ornament being a part of a theme, matching in their design or colors. I used to tell myself that when I grew up I would have one of those pretty, matching trees, because our own was so junky looking, with a jumble of colors, shapes and sizes donning the branches.


The matching retail trees



The Floria-Horsman non-matching tree


Now, our tree is the hodgepodge tree, with ornaments in an array of colors: red or burgundy, green or white, porcelain or wood, golds or silvers.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

Do you have a story about your favorite ornaments? Link up here to share!