25 Days of Christmas Ornament - #16

I just love the ideas my friend Carrie comes up with!! First the Alphabitty Moments and now 25 Days of Christmas Ornaments. Please visit her blog to see the MckLinky and take part or just to look at all the beautiful ornaments and stories that other bloggers are posting.

I really love nativity ornaments ... I have quite a few more but these three were hung near each other so I photographed them. Jesus' birth really is what we are celebrating, so it seems right to me that my decorations should reflect him.

25 Days of Christmas Ornaments - #12

I just love the ideas my friend Carrie comes up with!! First the Alphabitty Moments and now 25 Days of Christmas Ornaments. Please visit her blog to see the MckLinky and take part or just to look at all the beautiful ornaments and stories that other bloggers are posting.

For one more day we are trying to focus on homemade ornaments ... so here is one my mom bought for my hubby a few years back ... she bought one for me too, but I just photographed his. She purchased them at a craft fair, someone got old stamps and glued them to little white blocks. My mom purchased the years we were born and tied then on to our presents as name tags.

25 Days of Christmas Ornaments - #11

I just love the ideas my friend Carrie comes up with!! First the Alphabitty Moments and now 25 Days of Christmas Ornaments. Please visit her blog to see the MckLinky and take part or just to look at all the beautiful ornaments and stories that other bloggers are posting.


This week we are trying high light home made ornaments. I love this colorful star that Gus painted back in first grade at our homeschool co-op Christmas party ... that was several years ago now ... fun to remember

25 Days of Christmas Ornaments#10

I just love the ideas my friend Carrie comes up with!! First the Alphabitty Moments and now 25 Days of Christmas Ornaments. Please visit her blog to see the MckLinky and take part or just to look at all the beautiful ornaments and stories that other bloggers are posting.


These beautiful ornaments were loving carved by the same family friend who made the puzzle type manger scene in a previous post.

25 Days of Christmas Ornaments #9 and Happy Birthday to the Man I Lovve!

I just love the ideas my friend Carrie comes up with!! First the Alphabitty Moments and now 25 Days of Christmas Ornaments. Please visit her blog to see the MckLinky and take part or just to look at all the beautiful ornaments and stories that other bloggers are posting.


And I should probably explain that today is also my wonderful, adorably gorgeous husband's birthday. Happy Birthday Honey!!! His mom was great to save some of his childhood ornaments too ... this was an arts and crafts project he made and painted one year:

25 Days of Christmas Ornaments - #8

I just love the ideas my friend Carrie comes up with!! First the Alphabitty Moments and now 25 Days of Christmas Ornaments. This week she mentioned that we could focus on homemade ornaments ... I'll have to keep looking to see what other homemade ornaments I can find, but I came across this darling decoration that my kids love. It was not homemade by me, but by a friend of hubby's family who is very talented with wood ... that counts, right?

Please visit Carrie's blog to see the MckLinky and take part or just to look at all the beautiful ornaments and stories that other bloggers are posting.





Oh and look its snowing here!!!!

25 Days of Christmas Ornaments - #7

I just love the ideas my friend Carrie comes up with!! First the Alphabitty Moments and now 25 Days of Christmas Ornaments. Please visit her blog to see the MckLinky and take part or just to look at all the beautiful ornaments and stories that other bloggers are posting.


Again, not an ornament ... more of a decoration, but my mom bought it at a craft fair and we love to count down. Although as you can see my boys think they might make Chistmas arrive sooner if they mess up the numbers ... silly boys, every time I turn around the number changes.

25 Days of Christmas Ornaments - #6

I just love the ideas my friend Carrie comes up with!! First the Alphabitty Moments and now 25 Days of Christmas Ornaments. Please visit her blog to see the MckLinky and take part or just to look at all the beautiful ornaments and stories that other bloggers are posting.



I've always loved hanging candy canes on the Christmas tree, and a few years ago my mom bought me some very pretty glass ones. They look so yummy that I have to warn the kids they are not edible. If you hang them just right by a light they really do sparkel (I'll try get a better picture showing that some other time). But one of the other things I like about candy canes is the story behind them ... go ahead google it sometime!


The true meaning of the Candy Cane



Look at the Candy Cane

What do you see?

Stripes that are red

Like the blood shed for me



White is for my Savior

Who's sinless and pure!

"J" is for Jesus My Lord, that's for sure!



Turn it around

And a staff you will see

Jesus my shepherd

Was born for Me!

25 Days of Christmas Ornaments - #5

I just love the ideas my friend Carrie comes up with!! First the Alphabitty Moments and now 25 Days of Christmas Ornaments. Please visit her blog to see the MckLinky and take part or just to look at all the beautiful ornaments and stories that other bloggers are posting.

This is not exactly an ornament I place on my tree but it is an ornament that has graced our front door every year of our marriage. When we were first married we lived out near Seattle WA, where Allen was stationed in the US NAVY. Those first few months were horribly lonely for me, being new to the area and new to married life. Allen was gone for both my birthday and thanksgiving that year, but I did find some treasured friendships in some of the other wives. One friend in particular taught me much over the years. She is a shinning example of a Christ loving mom, wife, woman of God. I still treasure our friendship. And every year when I hang this wreath I can remember picking out the ribbon and ornaments and buying my first hot glue gun ... she helped me make this wreath and many other fun things while our husbands were out to sea. It was especially fun to hang it on our new front door this year!

25 Days of Christmas Ornaments - #4

I just love the ideas my friend Carrie comes up with!! First the Alphabitty Moments and now 25 Days of Christmas Ornaments. Please visit her blog to see the MckLinky and take part or just to look at all the beautiful ornaments and stories that other bloggers are posting.

Today I took a picture of an ornament we picked up one year while on a trip to one of my most favorite places on earth ... Disney World! Our youngest Mary does not say too many words yet at 18 months but one word that she has had perfected for months is "MOUSE!" She loves Mickey Mouse as much as I do! Its hard to keep her from loving and touching the mouse ornaments:

25 Days of Christmas Ornaments #3

I just love the ideas my friend Carrie comes up with!! First the Alphabitty Moments and now 25 Days of Christmas Ornaments. Please visit her blog to see the MckLinky and take part or just to look at all the beautiful ornaments and stories that other bloggers are posting.

My next ornament is a cute block I made as a girl scout in elementary school. My sisters and I were all girls scouts, my mom was a leader ... memories (big sigh) And this little ornament was a project we did one year around Christmas. Its fun for my kids to think of me as a young girl, stenciling anad glueing at a craft table with friends ... they giggle when I tell them my girls scout stories, and I guess I do too.

25 Days of Christmas Ornaments #2

I just love the ideas my friend Carrie comes up with!! First the Alphabitty Moments and now 25 Days of Christmas Ornaments. Please visit her blog to see the MckLinky and take part or just to look at all the beautiful ornaments and stories that other bloggers are posting.

The ornament I am showing today is another memory from my childhood. A good friend of my mom's used to send us these ceramic ornaments each year, different characters each year and she always wrote our names and the year on the back of each ornament. Theirs was always the first Christmas package to arrive, usually weeks before Christmas and we would beg my mom to let us open it because we knew the ornaments were inside. I used to love the Smurfs show and it was a very exciting year when I opened my package to find Smurfette.

25 Days of Christmas Ornaments #1

I just love the ideas my friend Carrie comes up with!! First the Alphabitty Moments and now 25 Days of Christmas Ornaments. Please visit her blog to see the MckLinky and take part or just to look at all the beautiful ornaments and stories that other bloggers are posting.



For my first of the 25 ornaments this season I chose my purple angel ... my mom and I are trying to remember if we bought her on a trip to Brazil or a trip to Chile back in 1980. We lived in Argentina then ... I would have been 8 or 9 years old. I remember these pretty hand made angels being sold at an outdoor market. We just can't remember which country. My favorite color has always been purple, so naturally I picked out a purple angel. My sisters each got one, too. One chose pink and one chose yellow. It was no where near Christmas time, but we bought them anyway and later on they adorned my mom's christmas trees for years. We each put our own color on the tree every year ... till we were to teenagerish to care about decorating the tree I supose. After I got married my mom let me sort through her christmas boxes and take many of the ornaments that were mine, so Allen and I would have ornaments for our first tree. I love this little purple angel and I hang her with warm memories each year.


Happy Advent and a Merry Christmas Season!