Christmas Ornaments With Stories

Every year we seem to acquire new ornaments for  our Christmas tree.  This year I made them myself.  I took a round piece of plastic mesh about 3 inches in diameter.  Then I cut out 4 pictures the same size as the mesh and laminated them.  I placed them on the mesh and then used a needle to poke holes all around the edges of the mesh.  Then I used yarn to fasten the edges together and to hold the pictures in place.  It would be easy to use any sort of picture to make similar ornaments.  In this case, the color side of the ornament has pictures of the woodworkers parents and my parents.

The reverse side of the picture, the black and white side, has the same couples on their wedding days.  They were married almost 2 months apart back in 1946.  I rather liked seeing them on the tree.

The other ornament with a story is really not new.  I am sure one of  our kids made the star many years ago.  It was made from a piece of poster board, cut in the shape of a star, then covered on both sides with festive carousel pony wrapping paper.  Over the years it has been a stalwart ornament for the bottom of the tree while the more breakable ornaments hang higher, out of the reach of small children.  This year we had 7 grandchildren here to help in decorating the tree, so I handed the breakable things to the older children and gave the more sturdy things to the younger children.  Over the years we have had 3 different angels residing on the top of our tree.  The angel always goes on last.

The youngest child this year turned 2 in September and was thrilled to help decorate a Christmas tree.  At home she apparently has a storybook which shows a picture of a baby being held up by its father to place a star on top of the tree. When I handed her the wrapping paper star and told her to put it on the bottom of the tree she resisted strongly and pointed up at the top of the tree and let us know quite emphatically that she knew very well where that star belonged.  After all, she'd seen it in her book!  We called her dad into the room and he lifted her up so she could place that star right where she wanted it.  I kind of liked it there.  Maybe we'll put it there again next year.