Ornament Overload?

Journaling: You wont find an elegant, coordinated, carefully arranged display of magazine-ready ornaments on our Christmas tree. Ever. Instead, you will be assaulted by an explosion of color and mismatched styles, with baubles and trinkets and keepsakes stuffed into every possible crevice of every inch of our sturdy 9-foot artificial tree. Mark says that we dont have to hang every ornament every single year, but I just cant bear to leave any of them off. There is the set of almost neon-colored plastic sugarplums that my parents bought me for my first Christmas. There are the crudely crafted school projects made lovingly by our children each year, with handprints, or photos, or just lots of glitter and glue. There are the dozens of winged creatures that represent my days of obsessively collecting anything angel related. There are ornaments that were gifts from friends we have long since lost touch with. There are adorable, beautifully crafted felt creations, carefully stitched by my mom, replicating the ones that always adorned our tree as I was growing up. There is the set of oversized stuffed versions of the animated characters from the classic Rankin Bass Rudolph TV special that Mark and I have probably both watched every year since it came out (well for me, every year since I was born). There is the glass Green Bay Packer ball, given to us by my dad, which hangs bravely in this blatantly Dallas Cowboys household. There is the assortment of ornaments bought on clearance after one of our first Christmases as a couple, just because we liked them. Each and every one of these is a memory that brings a smile and a reminder and a connection to the past. This is one of the most wonderful parts of Christmas for me. Ornament overload? No way. Theres always room for more joy.
kit: Deck the Halls by Kate Hadfield and Kim Jensen, available at The Lilypad
fonts: Rockwell (Monotype), Dirty Ego (Misprinted Type), Pea Anderson (Kevin & Amanda's Fonts for Peas)