Oh have we had a variety of Christmas ornaments. We have some that the children made in preschool or elementary school. These included yard dipped in white glue, curled on waxed paper and dried; some with a small photograph; bell cut from construction paper and colored.
When I was young, Mother made some ornaments out of a flour, salt and water dough. When my children were young, we also made some. The dough was colored and then the ornaments were decorated with glitter or thin tinsel. We still have some of these and they were made about 1983 or 1984. Many of them broke and were thrown out, but I still have a few of these fragile ornaments.
We have some ornaments from other countries. Some of them my mother gave us from her travels. Some Walt and I bought on our travels. We even have some leprechauns that were meant to be key chain holders. (I just removed the chain part and key loop and attached an ornament hanger.)
We also have some bubble lights. I found some in a catalog a few years ago. What great memories. They are not the large ones of my childhood, but they still bubble and keep me entertained. I still need to make sure that they stand up straight on the tree; otherwise they really don’t bubble well.
I made some tatted snowflakes that also hang on the tree. My sister made some crocheted ones for me. So, our tree has many memories of family and travels.
Do any of you remember the metal key that used to be on the top of cans like coffee and shortening? And you ended up with a strip of twisted metal? My grandmother used some of these twists on her tree. Some years later, in an antique store I actually found a small package of 10 of these, commercially made. The original price says 10¢. So they weren’t that expensive, but Grandmother still made her own.
Because we have an artificial tree, I no longer use icicles made of light-weight foil. Instead, I have some hand-blown ones that have colored liquid in them. I also have some that are just decorative hand-blown ones that really look like the icicles hanging from the eaves. And, because it is artificial, we can put it up early and keep it up until after New Year’s. And NO dried tree needles stuck in the carpet months later.
