It's still Christmas over here!

Hi there!
December 25th is Christmas everywhere, but here in the Netherlands there is a second day of Christmas celebrations too, which is today. The first day we usually have guests, but this year we have visited my aunt and today we are staying home, relaxing.

This is our Christmas tree. I never have a theme, or a theme color as I just keep every ornament that I have got and I really get attached to it. I prefer glass blown ornaments, especially vintage ones. Well let's take a closer view.

This is one of my absolute favorites!
It once belonged to my parents, who are no longer with us anymore. I inherited their Christmas decorations. This glass top, whip or tumble (I'm just not sure which word matches the dutch word 'tol') was in our Christmas tree as long as I can remember.

I don't have many ball shaped ornaments, only some vintage ones which are all decorated, just like this one, which belonged to my grandparents. Many of them still have candle grease over them, remember the time we only had real candles in the Christmas tree? I still can remember when my father came home with the new electric candles, oh boy weren't we modern people?

My father's workmate and buddy 'Kees', was a glassblower, working at the same laboratory as my dad. Of course our glass ornaments were vulnerable, and I loved playing with them, so once in a while my mum asked Kees to blow some new ornaments for us. This bird is a real 'Kees' and we had several psychedelic ornaments like this one, including a very large treetopper, which came out of the box broken last year.


Once a year Kees held a demonstration blowing glass and then there was the opportunity for children to blow a glass ornament as well. Blowing glass is a special job, you have to blow precisely, when you blow too soft the glass ball will not get bigger, if you blow too hard the glass ball will implode and you will end up with something like this:

Kees died of cancer about 25 years ago, but we still cherish these ornaments and he will come alive a little bit every Christmas in our house.



I also have a lot of crafted ornaments, starting with the paper Christmas bells my brother made with real glass glitter that has tarnished over more than 40 years
My daughter and son have made several ornaments as well.
Unpacking the Christmas decorations is a true walk down Memory lane to me. I wouldn't want to switch with anyone in the world!


This little Christmas gnome is my husbands pride. He, his elder brother and his sister got one each from their aunt and every year this little fellow gets a very good spot during the Christmas days.

My children used to choose a few ornaments every year and had their own little trees, but this year we only had one tree. The yellow cab was one of my sons favorites of course. I also like to buy christmas ornaments during the holidays, of course in Disneyland Paris. This 'watch'ornament says summer 2007 Germany.

I can talk hours about my Christmas ornaments, I really enjoy them and that is exactly what I am going to do now, wishing you a very merry Christmas as long as it takes!