It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

I have a huge box of Christmas decorations on the top shelf of my coat closet. I pull it down, balancing it on my head to get it off the shelf.

I pull out last year's cards (so I know who to send them to this year), my stockings and other holiday do-dads. Then there are all my smaller boxes full of ornaments. My tree does not have a "theme." I never could understand people who would just do a "red and white" tree or just gold. Please!! It's Christmas!! It's meant to be a mish-mash of fun!

I do have my traditional Hallmark ornaments—some Scarletts, a Marilyn, a Rhett, Pooh and Tigger, Dorothy and the Scarecrow, the Grinch and Max, Santa playing Trivial Pursuit. I even have a dill pickle that my friend Matt gave me. And this one:



Then I have a lot of ornaments with tags. Not store tags. Tiny little handmade tags in my mom's super neat handwriting. "Shell 92," "Shell 85," "Mich 94." Jan made the tags to mark the ornaments that my Grandma gave me. Each year at Thanksgiving, my cousins, Jenny and I all got an ornament from her. Some were store bought. Some are crafty. I don't know if she made them all, or got them at a craft show, but Margaret has been known to whip up some crafts.

We all ended up with so many ornaments, I think when we all moved away from home, our parents had to buy some to fill all the empty spaces. Then my cousins started having kids, and then the ornaments were for them. I'm not going to lie. I was jealous. I missed getting those ornaments, even though I have so many, I can't fit them all on my tree. Actually, I had so many, I didn't even realize until this year that I had two tarnished silver angels. On further investigation, I found a tag. "Jen 94."

Oops.

I'll leave the tags on them all, and make new ones when they fall off or fade, so I'll always know when I got them, and so they stand out. Because they are special, just like the lady who gave them to me.

Here's some of Margaret's greatest hits!

This angel doesn't have a tag, but until I bought the glittery disco star, it was on the top of my tree.



"Shell 85" It's a bee. In a dice that only has four dots on each side. She made it.



"Shelly 84"



"Shell 90" I know she probably made this one. My grandfather collected sand dollars all the time. There is another one without a tag that has a plastic toy soldier glued to it, which you can see in the above picture of the angel.


"Shell 89" Of course. 1989 just screams mirrored disco drum!!!


"Shell 92" This one is the best. She made it, and if you squeeze it, it plays a tinny version of Rudolph and the nose lights up. Love it! The day I press it and nothing happens is the day I lose it at Michael's trying to figure out how to get a new one in there.



MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!