Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Ornamental

I love Christmas trees. They are the symbol of the holiday season to me.  They are the first thing that comes to mind when anyone mentions Christmas.

Childhood Christmas? We had a fake white tree with red decorations almost every year. Except that one time we had a real tree & spent a month stepping on dried needles.

Memorable Christmas? Taking a tour of the Oglebay Mansion Museum. They had about a half dozen trees decorated in the Victorian style with live candles.

Perfect Christmas decor? A 9 foot fir covered in lights and a hodgepodge of ornaments & a big bow & streamers on it.

I want a big tree. A big fake pre-lit tree. Live trees are a PITA to care for & if I touch them I break out in a rash. I want one of those 9 foot ones that are 4.5 feet across at the bottom. They are spendy but the real expense comes with the accessories, all the ornaments to cover it, the ribbons, the garland – mostly the new larger house with the high ceiling and huge room needed to hold the tree.

We’d have to take out some tiles in the drop ceiling and put one of the couches out of the porch to make room for a tree that big.

No one sits on the 3 seat sofa anyway.

We’ve had a small tree for about a decade now.  When we were first married we lived in an apartment & had a small live replantable  tree in bucket. Then we had a larger apartment & for a couple years got a ‘live’ tree from one of the Boy Scout tree shops ib the grocery store parking lot. When we bought the house we cut down a tree at a neighboring tree farm. But honestly, I don’t like cutting down trees, so we went back to replantable tree in a bucket. We could only afford small trees in buckets, 3ft on average. The year Havoc was born we bought a 3ft fiber optic tree & have had it ever since. It had the advantage of being able to be put out of reach.

But you can’t hang normal sized ornaments on it. The branches are not sturdy enough and the scale is all wrong.  The live trees were ok for normal sized ornaments sort of. When we got the fiber optic tree I packed up most of the ornaments. We hung the smaller ones on the tree, plus the ‘1st Christmas’ ones & left the rest in the box.

I love decorating our tree. I love so many of our ornaments have been with us for years and years. It’s like wrapping the tree in memories when we hang them. My favorite part of the holiday season is decorating the tree with the boys and telling them about the various ornaments, where they came from, who made them or why we bought them. And I’ve always been a bit sad that most of them never saw the light of day.

This year we have at last a full sized tree. Only 6.5 feet tall and 2.5 feet across but big enough for all of our ornaments, at least from a scale & weight point. We have a lot of ornaments. We have ornaments made or bought from DH’s childhood, from my childhood, wooden ones my mom painted, yarn ones my grandmother made and Hallmark ones I bought before the fiber optic tree came into our lives.

We hadn’t seen most of them in a decade.

Oh hello Princess

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and the X-wing fighter!

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This angel is from high school

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This truck was on Dh’s tree from his birth until his mom passed away in 2001

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Now that we have a tree that can support them I was able to get some  Keepsakes ornaments this year.

Santa sent us these ornaments with Elvin on Monday morning. I think it will be a tradition.

Havoc got Superman

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Mayhem got Batman

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And mom & dad got Luke’s Landspeeder

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This is the tree

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We put up the small one as well because of scale issues again only the other way. You can’t see the small ornaments on the big tree.

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Have you put your tree up yet? What are your favorite ornaments or Christmas decorations?

11 comments:

helena said...

love those starwars ornaments. have you seen the forced reenty font - it is dingbats of starwars characters

The Four Week Vegan said...

Christmas ornament memory lane is such an important part of our Christmas tradition here. So glad you went big this year :) Both dh and I have ornaments from our childhood too. My favorite is a Mickey Mouse my mom made - reminds me of all the Disneyland trips we made over the years. Yes, our tree is up - it always goes up right after Thanksgiving.

Creative Junkie said...

What a pretty tree!

We have three trees - one main one in our living room, one smaller one in our upstairs hallways and one small one behind our family room couch. Our main one has a mix of all of our ornaments on it. The two others are more coordinated and "sophisticated" but I have to admit, the main tree is my favorite because it basically represents a history of our family through its ornaments.

Cheri said...

Our tree is fake and we've had it for 24 years now - our entire marriage! And the ornament collection has grown over the years, but it isn't Star Wars and Batman - it's Barbies and Disney characters (we have three girls). I've been wanting to document the ornaments and am wondering - how do you get such great photos where the ornament is in clear focus but the tree behind it is nicely blurred?

Maria Ontiveros said...

WE also believe in excessively huge trees (ours in a 11 foot real tree) with lots & lots of ornaments.
Rinda

SciFi Dad said...

We put up our tree the weekend before December started.

Sadly, I'm not allowed to have tv/movie type ornaments; my wife prefers her tree to be glass balls and homemade stuff.

I have special dispensation for:
1 Spider-Man
1 Detroit Lions helmet
1 craptacular Frosty ornament from when I was a little kid

And there's an understanding that if we ever get a Boba Fett ornament, it will be allowed on the tree.

glitterbygrammie said...

I love all my ornaments but my favorites are the oens they ahve made. Some at school and some right at my kitchen table. I enjoy doing crafts with the kids and grandkids. I like to switch up my tree every couple of years I will change the theme of my tree. I have a wrought iron railing so I hang garland on it so the old handmade ornaments and things will still be put out. This year it is candy canes. I have purchased last year when they all went on sale real candycanes of different colors. I found garland with candycanes. You never really realize all the candycane stuff out there until you start looking.
I also the ornament memories with my kids. I only have 1 left at home so this year will be very special for me. I think he won't be living at home this time next year.

Deana Birks said...

Olgebay Mansion Museum?! I haven't been to that place in years. I took my kids once when they were little but they don't remember. It was only an hour or so from where I grew up, but we don't live close to it anymore. I might make the trip with my kids, though. They have the Festival of Lights this time of year.

humel said...

I love this :-) So pleased for you that you got your ornaments out again! We haven't decorated ours yet but when we do I'll be blogging and scrapping all about various special ornaments :-)

Mommy, I'm Home said...

Our tree went up last week. I think my favorite ornament on it is the skydiving Santa, which I gave to my husband on our very first Christmas together.

ptooie said...

I put up our new 7.5' prelit tree while hubby was at work Thanksgiving night. We decided to start fresh on ornaments, so it's quite dull except a Hello Kitty, Spongebob, & mini-snowglobes with a daughter's name on each.
I need to go raid boxes, I got "first Christmas" stuff for each girl when they were born, but no clue where those are now.