Five on Friday: Every Ornament Tells A Story

I can remember one of the simple pleasures of childhood came each year when we decorated the Christmas Tree. While children are rarely nostalgic, handling the ornaments that I myself had made in preschool and kindergarten certainly gave me a taste of that sentimentality.

As an adult, I find that almost every ornament we have makes me nostalgic. Of course there are the obvious ones, all those "My First Christmas" types as well as anything with one of the kids' photos in it. But there are memories and emotions tied to nearly every ornament we own:

1. I offer a sampling of the "obviously these ornaments make me sentimental because my kids made them" category; most notably featuring the glass fused Santa that my oldest daughter once left as a gift for Santa along with the cookies (and I had to hide it for a few years before returning it to her) and that time my kids got wooden ornaments to decorate (and my oldest son did it his own way, of course)

Glass-fused Santa on the left

This is the opposite side of the plain wooden girl from the top photo.

2. The sparkly pear collection . . . I bought these for myself our first Christmas in our first home. We had a pear tree there and pureed pears were my first two babies' first foods. To this day, my daughter really loves pears and I wonder if it's because she ate so many of them as a baby.

3. The mermaids! These have all been gifts and are indicative of the fact that I've always loved mermaids, dressing up and saying to hell with society's beauty standards.

4.  When pickle ornaments started becoming popular, my entire family wanted one: our Grandmother, Babci, famously loved pickles and reserved the right to give each new baby of the family their first taste. Over the years, my collection of Babci-related ornaments has grown, which I love because it helps me feel her presence at the holidays as well as keep her memory relevant for my children. Aside from the pickle, I own some of her vintage glass-blown ornaments, her tinsel (she would put each individual piece on and off each year which I thought was insane but now I do that, too) and one of her posing with Santa that one of my sisters made for us all.

5. New memories being made yearly! I got this Suffragist as a gift this year and I know she will always remind me of the friend who gave it to me (whom I just met this past year through my new job) as well as all I have done and am planning on for celebrating 100 years of Suffrage!