Among other things, my grandma was a great crafter. I remember spending hours and hours in her tutiledge as a child, watching as she carefully assembled beaded and sequined ornaments. I probably fried some serious brain cells as I remember getting contact highs off the fixative she used for attaching figurines to interesting found-objects (perhaps the part of my brain that was meant for simple mathematical computations?). Her greatest accomplishments were, without a doubt, the stunning ornaments she created.
Every Christmas for as long as I could remember, all of her seven grandchildren got to choose one ornament each. The selections reflected the taste of each child, and changed as we grew up (I have a fair collection of cutesy pom pom-bears and the like). After she passed away, my aunt went through the remaining collection of my grandma's ornaments, and divied them up between families. My mom graciously added hers to the bevy, and my siblings and I spent a Christmas vacation going through them, remembering whose was whose, fighting over the choicest, and dividing up the rest.
I love the ornaments so much that I've always had some around, regardless of the season. In college, I had the beaded angels she made hung around my dorm room. At the condo, I would hang them from the ends of the curtain rods, and from a hook suctioned to the kitchen window. I even have one hanging from the credenza of my desk at work. Since I'm still in the very early stages of actually decorating our house (because, you know, there are so many cosmetic issues we need to fix before we can actually think through what we want the house to look like), I haven't gotten much opportunity to decorate, let alone provide a special space for a selection of ornaments. All but one of the hanging artwork in the house uses nails that were already there when we moved in, and I put those up because I was so freaking sick and tired of looking at nails in a bare wall (they're all hung too high, but I don't want to do anything about it until after we paint). Still, I've managed to find a home for at least one ornament.
For the first two Christmases after we divided up the ornaments, we didn't have room in our condo for a full-blown Christmas tree. I followed my sister's lead and wrapped the banister of the stairs in garland and twinkle lights, and hung the ornaments from there. This approached looked pretty, and I left them up for as long as I could (I swear they didn't stay up until late January because I was being lazy--I really like them, and with them on the banister like that, it doesn't scream Christmas in the same way that Christmas trees scream Christmas).
I can't wait for Christmas this year! We've got the *perfect* place for a tree! And it's gonna be PURTY.
Disclaimer: the photos in this post were taken with our old camera last Christmas, and it was on its way to meet to the Reaper. That's why the shots are blurry/grainy.
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