Snowman Ornies

Here's a simple batch of Jingle bell Snowman Ornies that I painted last December.

Salt Dough Buttons

This is my first try with making salt dough anything. So I thought I'd try to make some old looking buttons. Then I thought, hum, bet these would look cute on my primitive tree as little ornaments, or "ornies" as we call them around here. They really add a primitive touch, that's for sure.

Tree Ornaments

This year I loaded down our tree with almost all of the ornaments we've gathered over the years. Including those from our ornament giving tradition, (click here to read more on that.) So I just wanted to take a closer look at the tree and share some pics of the ornaments for todays post.

The first four ornaments below were all gifts from my sister-in-laws from Christmas's gone by. I just adore them.



Here's one, below, of my absolute favorite soft white, glass ornaments. I just love the glow it gives off when a light is directly behind it. It's not an older ornament on the tree, but it was bought at a flea market, well a box of 4, for only $1.50 and they are older. The box looked like from the early 80's or so.








Oh, here's one,below, of my husbands old Hotwheels Car Ornaments. I think, without going down and looking, it had a date of the late 1970's stamped on it. He has two of these. One year I had him a tree fixed up of only guy-type ornaments. It was kinda cute. We saved this one out of an action box years ago and he has held onto it ever since. I'm guessing we've had it now for about 11 years or so.





Below, if you look closely, is Santa's outfit hanging up on a clothes hanger. lol. I bought it at the local Peddlers Mall just last week.

Here's an old ornament we've had around for years. I won an auction lot box that had vintage Christmas ornaments in it and in the mix I found this cute wooden one. It has 1976 engraved in his hat, which isn't at all a significant number to me, but I just had to keep it. Well, it kinda is, as I think maybe my older brother was born in 1976.

That's just a handful, but the camera wasn't focusing just right on the last few so I gave up for now. lol. Was probably just some of the flashing Christmas lights causing interference, but not for sure.

Christmas Tradition | Collecting Memories not just Ornaments

When I married my husband almost 13 years ago, I soon realized his family has a few traditions that I just love.
One of them is the ornament giving at Christmas by all the girls in the family. My husband comes from a family of 4 siblings same as I do. But that then leads to also the 3 sister-in-laws also. And his mother also participates in the tradition. And as the years go by, the granddaughters and so on, are also starting to join in.
Anyways, all the girls had a long lived tradition started by one of my husbands sister-in-laws, Betty Jo, that instead of giving traditional gifts each year, we would exchange an ornament.
Each girl, of course, tends to have a favorite color or love of something, and we try to incorporate this in each years' ornament gift. For example, my husbands sister, Lisa, loves owl ornaments because of how they look on her tree. So for this year I'm gonna try to find an owl ornament or make one.
The ones pictured above is what I have picked up through the year to act as starters to their ornament gift. I will probably use them and just customized them this week for each girl. I have some that is not pictured also that are already repainted and ready to go.
I just love this tradition and as the years have flown by, I am realizing I am collecting memories, not just ornaments.

Rag Balls | Christmas Tree Balls

These are some home-made Christmas tree balls I made.
I call them simple "rag balls" when they don't have the hook for hanging. Rag balls are a common primitive decoration in the country. As you can simply fill any old bowl with them to add a dash of color here or there. And in the old days, mothers or grandmothers use to make them for their kids to actually play with.

They are simply a ball made up of layers of cut material. I chose the blue pattern because I have blue willow china in my dinning room, and the tree in there is done in these and the aluminum cookie cutters.