Ornament #7

Today we have a martini glass.  I have a handful of different martini ornaments on my tree.  My maiden name is Martini.  No joke.  I used to hate that name, growing up.  When Jay and I were engaged, he insisted on changing his name to mine.  Jay Martini does have a nice ring to it!  But I was ready to be rid of it and I changed my name to his.

I have collected martini paraphernalia for a long time.  The funniest thing about that is working for churches because some churches have rules about their staff members drinking alcohol.  We would receive looks when church people came over to my house and they saw my martini towels, candles, signs, ornaments, et cetera.  I sometimes had to explain the reason we had so many martinis around the house.  They could ask us not to drink, but they certainly could not take my name away and I still displayed them proudly!

Sometimes now, I do wish I had kept my name and had Jay change his last name.  It's a great, unique name.  I still proudly display martinis all around my house.  If I ever publish the book I have been writing, it will definitely be under the name Brooke Martini.

Cheers to you and yours this holiday season!

Ornament #6

In Chicago, I worked for 5 years in the catering department at Willow Creek Church.  Part of that ministry included the beloved decorating team, led by my boss Lore.  She had a great team of volunteers, but sometimes tasks were too large and we had to step up to help complete projects.  This ornament was one of those projects.

I have a couple of these cute wooden gingerbread men because Jay received one too.  These were attached to the staff Christmas party invitations one year.  I wonder how many former staff still have their gingerbread men hanging on their trees today in 2014.

Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?

Ornament #5

Today's ornament is a piggy bank.

Neither Jay nor I remember where we got this one or when, yet it is so fitting for us now that Jay works in the financial field.  He'd like to have a whole tree in his office filled with piggy bank ornaments.

So, if you see any while you're out and about shopping, let us know!

Feed the pig!
Ride the bull.
Beware of the bear!

Ornament #4

Following yesterday's wooden elf made by Jay on one of our first trips to Hayward, I'm sharing the one that I made on that same trip.

This is my wooden goose.

Canada Geese are some of my favorite animals.  As a kid, I grew up in Suburban Chicago on a beautiful lake complete with a covered bridge.  The geese that lived on the lake were awful and they chased me.  They left messes all over our yard and we trained our dog to chase them away.  But in my 20's right around the time I met Jay, this family of 4 geese adopted me.  It was the strangest thing to witness.  Two tennis ball-sized, yellow, fuzzball goslings jumped into my lap while their large adult parents just stood calmly next to me, their beaks right in line with my eyeballs.  One sudden move and I was surely going to get it from mama and papa goose!

I gave them names.  I could carry them around the yard, they would eat out of my hand, they would walk up the hill to the house, jump up on the deck and peck at the sliding glass door of the house, they would fly to me if I called them all the way from the other end of the lake.  Quite remarkable!  And you've ever seen the movie Fly Away Home, my interactions with my 4 geese were so very similar.  I just never flew with them!  I did jump in and swim with them and that kind of freaked them out.  They didn't know what to do with that and they stayed further back and watched me swim.  They stayed with us for a good couple of years, even in the winter months.

My mom always used to say that the geese on our lake should be required to wear red bows at Christmastime.

Jay got to meet my geese before my parents sold the home.  He got to pet them and hand-feed them.

So when it came down to choosing which wooden ornament to paint, I had to do this one.  This is one of my favorite ornaments ever and I get to hang it on the tree.

I miss my "goose boys" like crazy.

Ornament #3

Today's ornament is a wooden elf.

When Jay and I started dating, about 15 years ago, he took me up to his mom's in Hayward, Wisconsin after the holiday.  I think it was my first visit to meet his mom.  During our time there, we painted these wooden ornaments.  This was Jay's.  His mom laughed at it and said it looked just like his Uncle Jack.

Every year, we take this out of the box and Jay gets to hang Uncle Jack on the tree.  We laugh.

We would like more wooden ornaments but have a hard time finding some like this.  If you happen to know of any, let me know.  It would be a fun family activity.

Ornament #2

If I try to go in order from oldest to newest, I'm going to mess up.  So today's ornament is.... joy.

I have no idea when we got this or where it came from, but this year I made Jay laugh with this one.  I was taking the ornaments out of the box, carefully, one by one.  Then we'd reminisce about where it came from and hand it to one person to hang on the tree.  I gave this one to our 4-year-old daughter, with one instruction:

"Take this to daddy and ask him for help to hang it the right way.  I don't want it to say "yoj."  

Jay laughed.  

I love it when I can make him laugh!  Hopefully it made you laugh too.

Spread some joy this December (and please don't spread any yoj because nobody wants that)!

Ornament #1

Welcome to the Christmas Ornament Challenge!  Here is my first installment.

I wasn't sure where to start: with an old ornament or a new one, or somewhere in between.  Dilemma.

I chose one of the oldest ornaments we have on the tree.  This is a felt drum that my mom and her friend Sue made back in the 70's in our old neighborhood in Burnsville, Minnesota.  My mom and Sue made a ton of felt ornaments, not just drums.  But all sorts of felt ornaments hung on our Christmas tree when I was a kid.  Only when I was a teenager, did my mom upgrade to a more formal tree and the felt ornaments have been in boxes ever since.  This is the only one that I have.  My brother Darin has his favorite black and white whale.  I'm not sure if Todd has any.  Maybe he has a drum or two as well.

If my mom digs out her old felt ornaments, oh, the stories those tell!  We have Mr. & Mrs. Claus who were so tattered that we laughed until tears ran down our faces because they were such a wreck.  The couple Claus looked quite strung out or drunk off their a$$es or something!  Hysterical!  Sue's daughters Kendra and Heather speak of the Christmas Hooker ornaments.  These I don't recall quite as well.  If they make a photo appearance, I'll be sure to forward.

But this drum is probably as old as I am -- 40 years old.  It makes me think of my childhood Christmases.  Good times.