When I was decorating our tree this year, I realized that we really didn’t have very many ornaments. Definitely not enough to fill up a whole tree! Our collection consisted of: five small brass stars my mom sent to me while I was on a mission in Argentina, a handful of tiny copper pineapples (the gift toppers from Williams-Sonoma), some small stuffed elephants I cut from a garland Dave and I picked up in Thailand, and a few needle felted birds. Oh, and some sparkly gold ones I rescued from being trashed by a friend.
Luckily, thanks to the Holiday Ornament Exchange, I received eight amazing handmade ornaments to add to our small collection. It was so much fun to create and ship off a pile of ornaments, but it might have been even more fun to get a special little package in the mail every couple days for a week, each one containing someone else’s inspiration and handicraft. I may just become converted to handmade ornaments.
I love that even with a group of similar women (well, at least as far as sewing and blogging) the ornaments are all so unique! Dixie, Jen, Mika, Suzanne, Sonja, Maddie, Kelli, and Megan all put such thought and creativity into their ornaments, and I love them all! (Click on each name for her full ornament DIY). It was wonderful to be a part of this fun event! I have loved becoming acquainted with these awesome ladies, and can’t wait to see what they have in store in 2013.
You’ll notice all of the handmade ornaments made it into the tippity-top-unreachable-by-little-fingers section of our tree. It’s a good thing, because the bottom half has slowly deteriorated in the two weeks our tree has been up. First the ornaments began to go, slowly, one by one. When I find them around the house, I just stick them up a little higher. Then, yesterday afternoon when I plugged in the lights half of the bottom strand simply stayed dark. Maybe it was just old, or maybe it was yanked on by my little destructochildren? It’s a good thing the lights are unplugged all day while my sweet boys awake.
One day I’ll have enough cool handmade ornaments to fill the whole thing. And by then my kids will most likely be old enough to enjoy them as much on the tree as off!
And although it appears we’ll be in a wrapping rush, our gifts are actually pretty much ready to go. They’re just stacked in piles in our 6′ tall bookshelf for safe keeping until Christmas Eve. (Whoever thought of putting a bunch of presents on the ground under the tree must not have had children!)
Check out how the other’s have displayed their ornaments (probably not on a half-lit tree…) right here:
Sonja of Ginger Makes
Mika of Savory Stitches
Suzanne of My Beau Baby
Megan of Megan Nielsen (Oh shoot. I mailed all of the ornaments to Megan in Australia and they haven’t arrived yet! Maybe before Christmas?)
Jen of Grainline Studio
Dixie of Dixie DIY
Madalynne of Madalynne
Kelli of True Bias
Merry Merry Christmas to you all, wonderful readers. I wish you a magical holiday!
