Christmas Traditions

I think I’m the last blogger in blogland who celebrates Christmas to post photos of my Christmas decorations.

I have loads of ornaments for the tree but not many other decorations, so I headed to Jo-Ann Fabrics and hit up a 60% off sale where I scored loads of goodies for hardly any money. I’ve had the wreath above the mantle for a while (yes, it’s hung too low but at this point I don’t feel like wasting another Command strip to adjust it) but bought the garland, votive holders, and shimmery votive candles at a steep discount.

It’s difficult to see in the photo, but I wove three different types of garland together: basic faux evergreen, silver berries on brown vines, and gold berries on vines. I also grabbed two pieces of faux greenery to include, which have a different type and color of needle from the wreath and garland and a few pine cones. I’m pretty happy with the layered effect.

The candles are in short vases that double as votive holders. Inside are red and gold candles. The votive holders serve a secret purpose: I put reusable sticky-tack putty on the bottoms of the vases to temporarily adhere them to the mantle, keeping the garland firmly in place behind the vases.

It’s a long-standing tradition in my family to exchange ornaments, so over the years I’ve amassed a good collection. As a child, my parents gave me my own little faux tree to start a collection of teddy bear ornaments, and Santa would leave a few packages beneath it. As I grew older the collection grew as well. When I travel, I try to find teddy bear ornaments. I’ve found them in Edinburgh, Moscow, Amsterdam, Paris… Not all of the ornaments I’ve collected during my travels are bears (much to my husband’s delight). Other styles were picked up in Greece, Germany, Hungary, Switzerland, and Austria.

My favorite sentimental ornament was made by my mom in 2005, for the first Christmas after my grandma passed away. She used old buttons from my grandma’s button box to make this ornament for me:

In an ideal world, I’d have room in my house for two trees – a “designer” on with fancy, matching bulbs, and a family tree with all of our sentimental ornaments. Which do you prefer? Fancy and well-coordinated, or collected over time?