After reading Christie’s post about the meaning of the Christmas ornaments on her tree I thought I would share a similar post on here. I am a person of layers…..a bit like Shrek I suppose! I like almost everything in my house and life to have meaning and depth (I have a series of artwork in mind using layers…one day!) including my Christmas decorations. In fact, all the ‘things’ hanging around in my house collecting dust are there for a reason. They have a memory or person attached to them especially the things we brought back from Africa and anything that was passed down from either of my Nannas.

So, here’s a sample of some of our ornaments. Our tree does look similar to other people who have little children (and let them decorate)…a bit of a mish mash, kind of like someone tipped or threw the ornaments on instead of placing them. K did however place them on the tree and had a lot of fun doing it (and L had a go too):

Not a bad end result:

So, on with the ornaments:

This is one I made quite a few years ago, I keep forgetting about these (there are quite a few in different colours) and each year I think that I should make more for friends. I need a reminder!

Miss K made this one at Kid’s Corner this year, it has her name and the date on it so I am going to enjoy putting this up year after year.

Last year I picked up this bauble in the post Christmas sales and it allows you to put a photo inside so I put one of my parents on one side and one of my brother and his family on the other side as all of them live interstate and I won’t see them this Christmas. I actually was able to buy two of these so I printed out some photos for them of all of us and put them inside and gave it to them.

These two have special meaning but aren’t related. The one of the left is one of about three the same that are left over from our tree when I was a kid. I remember putting these on the tree year after year and no matter how tatty they get I’ll still put them up. The one on the right was made my me when I was in high school (during Girl’s Brigade I think). Its been on the tree for so long it doesn’t seem right not to put it up.

This was one of last years decoration inventions that I put in my Etsy shop. I have a couple left that I’ve kept. Next year I hope to be more organised and make some more to sell.

This was bought for Miss K by my Mum so she could think of Nanna each year at Christmas. I need to get one for Miss L.

There are about three of these and they are very special, precious even. These were from my Nanna’s tree and are a bit old. Some of them are broken but I don’t care, they remind me of her.

Finally, each year Miss K has been making a decoration and we give them to close family. The eggs I posted about earlier are this year’s gift and this bear was last year’s gift. The year before she made a sparkly tree although I didn’t get to keep any of those.

Seeing as L is so little this year and obviously would pull the tree apart, we put up our smaller tree this time and put it up high. This was instead of doing what a lot of people suggest and putting it in the playpen. There’s just not enough room in our home to put up a playpen.

Christmas really isn’t about all this fluff at all, its about our personal peace with God (post coming soon) but I like the fluff. I consider it all part of our culture and as long as our kids understand the difference between the fluff and the peace, I don’t mind. Its up to hubby and I to make sure they see that difference.

Merry Christmas everyone!