I love this time of year! I always have. As a teenager I would set up a mini tree in my room. (usually right after Halloween) I love that a radio station in Utah starts playing Christmas music on November 1st!
Being a home ec, crafty type gal, I love perfectly coordinating trees. You know the type where the ornaments all match, the ribbon all matches, the twinkling white lights, etc... The ones look like Martha Stewart herself decorated it. Strangely enough this has never been my tree.
As a child my parents would give each of us an ornament for the year. It usually represented something about us that year. There is a small pink Victorian hat box I got as teenager when I was going through a pink phase, there is a nutcracker from the year I saw the nutcracker, a homemade Strawberry Shortcake ornament from the year I was 7, I even have a Styrofoam ball with purple pipe cleaners that I made when I was 3! And if you know me you know there are a TON of snowmen ornaments!
I have continued the ornament a year with Emily and Brinley. Emily loves to look at her 10 ornaments and think back to the year that Barbie Princess and the Pauper was IT. Emily even has her own Strawberry Shortcake ornament (that year I tried it convince her Strawberry was IT) She has several princess ornaments and (of course) this year it had to be Hannah Montana.
Brinley doesn't have as many (she IS only 3) and naturally felt that the princess and barbie ornaments were hers. But she was so excited as we pulled her Elmo from last year out of the box. And she carried around this years ornament, Dora, till it broke!
So my tree doesn't match...its hodgepodge...a hodgepodge of all my memories...memories of childhood...when it was just brad and i...and now the collection of all the things Emily and Brinley cherish...I love my hodgepodge tree and all of the memories it brings...and I will take those over a perfectly coordinated tree any day...Take that Martha Stewart!
