Yes, I too love things.

"Christmas 1976"

This year we didn't cut down a tree from the back yard because the only available choices were just too scrawny (and you thought last year's was scrawny!). Instead Max and Adam went to a nearby lot where Max picked out such a perfectly shaped noble fir that visitors are repeatedly asking if it is fake. He did a good job, that boy!

Me, however, I love the tree every year. Mostly, I guess, it's because I love my ornaments. I started collecting ornaments (or should I say, that my mom started collecting ornaments for me) as a little girl. And in our large family where space and things were rationed, I always loved pulling out my own ornament shoe box and evaluating the contents every year.  I still do.  Oh, and maybe because I've always had a touch for a sentimental and the dramatic too.

made from a toy I bought in a Covent Garden toy store in London

I also have a Beef Eater "toy" ornament to go with it

But, by far, my favorite ornaments are the ones that represent places I've visited. I started collecting this kind of ornament with my favorite traveling pal, Anna, when we spent a summer traveling some of Western Europe together while in college.  Since we were living out of our backpacks with not a lot of hauling space, and since our meager money supply was spent primarily on crowded hostels, chocolate in all forms, and art museums, there wasn't a lot left over for shopping.  Ornaments turned out to be the perfect "tourist trinket."   Now I love pulling out my Europe ornaments shoe box (which all these years has randomly been a K-swiss box where the lid is a big British flag--or else because I'm a big nerd). And the collection has grown to include ornaments from my subsequent travels, but I feel hesitant to include too many pictures here for fear of being more of a giant nerd than I already am.  However, if you ever come over to see them, I'll happily tell you where each one comes from.  

"Pinocchio" from Italy

in the background is an Eiffel Tower given to me by Challey, 

since I passed up my chance for a Paris ornament when there with her.

When we were visiting Prague, we bought decorated eggs--real blown-out egg shells that are ornate, colorful, intricate, delicate, and (I think) incredibly beautiful.  I think that I spent at least 20 minutes in agony trying to decide on just six to buy.  For the few weeks left in the trip, there are plenty of photographs of both Anna and I each with a small, handled paper bag in our hands, never stowed away in our luggage for fear of crushing these prized acquisitions.  And the eggs all made it home safely, and 12 years later, only one has been smashed (and only last year).  But now I kick myself that I didn't buy 3 dozen then and just ship them home directly from Prague....ahhh, regrets.  (And for the record, Anna, I also regret that I didn't buy a miniature Wallace Fountain when in Paris....$20 just seemed like such a lot at the time!)

 

the red egg is from Prague, the blue is a painted wooden egg from Budapest

"Mozart" from Salzburg, Austria

Dala horse from Sweden, from when Adam and I went together

glass bird that Adam brought me from when he visited Munich, Germany