Sunday, July 17, 2016

Christmas in July - Day Seventeen

Week Three already - the month is just flying.  Decking the Halls is this week's theme so I'll start off with trees, personal style, and ornaments.  I guess cosy is the best way to describe my personal style.  I want the house to be warm and inviting but I don't really decorate with particular themes or a particular color scheme.  Our main tree is a mish-mash of ornaments that we have collected over the years - I buy Hallmark ornaments every year and we always buy something when we travel (locally to a new landmark or festival or farther afield).  I still have Sophia's preschool and later school artwork and gifts from friends.  It takes forever to decorate the tree because I have to stop and recall the memory associated with so many of the ornaments.


I made this photo as large as my blog would hold so you could get an idea of some of the ornaments we've collected over the years.  I have a complete ornament inventory but it's my goal to have a photo inventory at some point.  I love to journal and I want to preserve all the precious memories associated with each ornament.

At the top of the tree is our Christmas in Virginia ornament - I bought it at a craft fair and I wish I had picked up a card from the vendor.  Perhaps he might have been able to make ornaments from other states.


A baking Santa is to the right of Christmas in Virginia and immediately below that is a naval officer that I bought and had inscribed the year Vic was commissioned.  He's so cute.  There's a lot of Disney ornaments sprinkled throughout the tree - I think you can see Cinderella's Castle, Lion King, and nearer the bottom, Hercules.  Over in the lower right-hand section of the tree are a lot of the ornaments made for me by my dear friend Jodie.  There's a pinecone decorated with pages from Emma (the name of my former blog, When Good People Get Together, was a quote from Emma), a bird in a nest with the banner Joyeux Noel (from the year I was going to go back to school to study French), and a cream felt mitten.

There's an Elf on the Shelf, a green tube labeled Letters to Santa, a wedding favor from a wedding we attended when we lived on Saipan, and all sorts of others.
 
Top row: Three shopping ladies (me and my friends Jodie and Kelly), Great Wolf Lodge, Cape Henry lightouse, Liberty Bell
Second row:  USS KAUFFMAN, Jamestown, Rowena's Tea Room, King Tut
Third row:  Norfolk Mermaid, starfish, Triple R Ranch, Christmas in Virginia
Bottom row:  King's Arms Tavern in Colonial Williamsburg, Mount Vernon, Guy Fawkes, reindeer from a Polar Express event
I put together this collage of our ornaments from Virginia.  The Liberty Bell and King Tut are from our trip to Philadelphia in 2007 (we left Virginia, got settled in Rhode Island, and then left for vacation in Philadelphia).  I really need to go back to make collages from the ornaments we collected when we lived in other states.

What's on your tree?

4 comments:

  1. Beautiful tree!! I do snowman ornaments, red balls and icicles.

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  2. Love your tree! Some years I unpack all the sentimental ornaments. And then some years if I am overwhelmed with things to do, or late getting started, or just want a change, I might go with just red and white, or just clear and white (last year). One of our houses in the past had three living areas and I would put up three trees, but that was when I was a lot younger and had a lot more energy! :)

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