More Christmas Decorations

I stayed home from work on Monday to get more Christmas stuff done. One of the things I finished was putting up all the rest of the Christmas decorations.

I like saying "all the rest of the Christmas decorations" when in reality, I don't really have that many and the ones I have take about 40 minutes to put up.

First up:
My mom came up with this idea of an ornament display when we lived in the apartment which wasn't really big enough for a tree, but had a nice big window. She, and the rest of the family members, been buying me (and my brother) an ornament every year. The idea was that when I went out on my own, I would have enough ornaments for a full tree. It worked. Although I still celebrate Christmas with my family, I do have enough ornaments for a tree of my own.

I actually like displaying them this way better, as they are all much more visible than they would be on a tree. They range from somewhat fancy to homemade and I can tell you stories about a lot of them. Though you can ask me to stop when you get bored.
The above two are a representative sample. The one on the left is perhaps my favorite ornament because my grandmother made it for me for Christmas 1975. She was very crafty and packaged it for safekeeping in a See's Candy container. I like the container almost as much as the ornament because it says "Patty's X-Mas Ornament 1975" in her handwriting. Samples of her handwriting are slowly disappearing and it is nice to see it each December.

The one on the right came from one of the Aunts from one of their many trips to Hawaii. I like it because they took a nice seashell and made it fairly kitschy with the dried flowers. It's dorkily hip.
I love kid-crafted ornaments and my mother and I used to have an amusing silent battle each Christmas. I would put the ugly kid ornaments my brother and I made in prominent places on the front of the tree and she would move them to the back. The pine cone is my favorite, because it looks like a preschool concoction. There is a very sad piece of ribbon strangling the cone that makes me laugh.

The one to the right of it is one of the many play-doh ornaments in the collection. Many of them saw their sized reduced over the years because I always liked to taste of homemade play-doh and took bites out of them through the years. There is a holly leaf that is about one quarter of its original size.

The yarn thing to the left of the pine cone also causes giggling. You can't see them, but it has two eyes attached to what was supposed to be the hair section and they are very crazy looking. Someday the pink yarn alien will come alive and--I don't know, begin converting the other ornaments to his alien religion?

What I learned from the above paragraphs. "ornament" does not have an "i" after the "n." Though I typed it that way every single time and had to go back to fix it.
On the left, our holiday swag, which I bought at the Alliance Greens Sale (the Alliance is the old ladies in my church's organization) because "swag" is more fun to say than "wreath." On the right, we have a metal door which allows us to attach all sorts of things to it with magnets. One year at the apartment I made a whole fireplace out of construction paper and hung the stockings on the "mantle." I wasn't in the mood for that this year, so stockings were just hung by the door.
This tree I bought for 50% off at Fred Meyer during the January storm of 2004. I was trapped in my apartment for four days and on day three, I had to go to the store. I walked there, which was my first bit of exercise in days. It felt great. I remember agonizing whether to buy this tree because I was in graduate school at the time and money was very tight. It was $5.00. I'm glad I did, because it all fits in a nice, compact carrier and it is fun to get out and put it away. The ornaments didn't come with any way to hang them on the tree, so I used paper clips.