All Things Woompty

Sometimes a tree's not just a tree

This is our Christmas tree. It's fake, and it's kinda cheap looking, but man, I love it. I'm all about the white sparkly lights, twinkling off the ornaments and the funky plastic icicle garland I found this year. Since I upgraded us to a taller tree this year, I had to buy more ornaments. I gravitated to the old school looking glass ornaments, the ones with the glitter and the funky shapes, the ones you pray don't get dropped on the floor because they'll shatter into a million tiny pieces. Those are the best kind of ornaments.

But our tree has some other interesting ornaments too.


This is a picture of three year old me, glued onto a hand-cut cardboard bell that was then smothered in silver glitter. I can't remember if my mom or my grandmother made it, but when my grandmother died I somehow ended up inheriting her ornaments and this one was tucked in there. She hung it on her tree every year, and now so do I. It may be a little egotistical to hang a picture of myself on my tree, but I do it for my grandma.


Everyone in my family (extended and patched together as it is) has one of these ornaments. JM bought them for all of us a few years back, so we could hang it on our respective trees and remember the past. We always had s'mores when we had one of our all-day beach parties, or when we went camping. Really, anytime we did something together outside, we ended up having s'mores involved. My childhood could have been a LOT worse, let me tell you.


This is Our Lobster. It's cloisonne enameled lobster with a tail that actually moves. It's completely strange looking yet gorgeous all at once. I bought it in a gift shop at The Breakers, a gorgeous gigantic mansion in Newport, Rhode Island. It was the end of our first big vacation together and I'd been buying gifts for everyone else, but I wanted to get something for us, so we could look back years later and remember how much we loved Newport and how much we loved that vacation.


But the very best thing about the tree is how much the cats love hanging out under it. It's like living in a Christmas card when they start hanging out under there. Abbie's decided it's her new favorite nap spot, and Riley likes to take his baths under there. And both of them are so cute I could just eat them and their kitty toes right up.

But PETA frowns on eating kitty toes, so instead I'll just keep bothering them by taking innumerable pictures of them until the tree comes down and the ornaments and the memories get packed away again until next year.

posted by Melinda @ 10:30 PM