Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone has a great holiday! Here is a picture of my main tree. There are a lot of ornaments. Maybe a few too many. We buy ornaments for each other each Christmas and we also buy one every year on vacation.

Here are a few of my favorites:

An oyster shell Santa and a crab shell Santa from Ocracoke, NC. We bought these the first year we went on vacation together in 1997. We always make sure to search out something locally made. Ocracoke isn't a really wealthy place and when the tourists go home, there isn't much of a livelihood.

This is one of my first ornaments when I was an adult. The boyfriend I had from age 20 to 26 (and lived with for 4 years) was a firephobe and we could never have a Christmas tree or a jack-o-lantern, or a candle of any kind. So after we parted ways, I went out and got the biggest and best Christmas tree I could find and put it in my bedroom, so I could fall asleep looking at it everynight (and allow it to remain lit while unattended all night long. Take that Jim!). I didn't have much money for ornaments and the 4 little snowmen were pretty much it. To me, they represent strength and independence and feeling comfortable in your own skin for the first time.

This is a vintage Santa that my husband put in my Christmas stocking two years ago. He isn't the greatest gift giver, but I loved this and it meant a lot that he "thought' about it and searched for it.

My husband is an engineer for the railroad and every year I get him a train ornament. I think he is kind of sick of them but I like them. This year he gets a vintage pick-up truck instead. The ornaments shown are a Pennsylvania Railroad boxcar and a Chesapeake and Ohio coal car. Yes, our dog is named after a rail line whose mascot is a sleeping kitten.

These are ornaments for kitties that have passed on. Blackie and Quina (Beanie). I have them for all the pets and makes me tear up when I put them on the tree because I know that someday, all of the ornaments will be for pets that I no longer have.

This is one of those styrofoam ball kits that people used to make. My mom made it for her parents before I was born and my grandmother always hung it on the swing lamp over the breakfast table at Christmas time. When she died in 1979, my grandfather left it there and it hung there until his death in 2001. It reminds me of him and his pnk formica kitchen and his fabulous spaghetti sauce and the very cheap beer we would drink when I visited him, laughing and talking at that little kitchen table under that glittery green ball.