janeowit's Journal: Ornups! Or: The Importance of Reporting Ornaments

So this morning Sol was bragging about how nice her ornaments are, she didn't say it but the word classy was implied. Sure, I could sit around and be jealous or I can revel in how craptacular my family's ornaments are!

Here are a few of my favorites:

1. The Pipe-cleaner star: This is something I made, and my stupid pills* are really making it hard to describe. There are 4 pipe cleaners and the midpoint they are twisted to join all of them together, and the 8 ends stick out along the x, y, and z axis in all four quadrants. But it is all scrawny and bent, it looks so sad.
2. Bongo and Waldo: This seems to be some kind of 2" by 2" cardboard advertisement for two stuffed sweaters wearing teddy-bears. Their names, Bongo and Waldo, are printed along the bottom.
3. The M&M Santa: You know how around the holidays some candies come in clear tubes that may or may not look like candy canes? And they put a cute little stopper on it. I believe that in 4th grade my secret santa gave me a tube of M&Ms, and it had an M with a santa hat on for the stopper. When I was done eating the candy, I put the cheap plastic figure on the tree. Since then it has been part of the permanent collection.
4. The Cube: I made a cube out of several pieces of origami paper, and voila! I made an ornament. It is green, orange, black, yellow, and hideous. There is no way to actually attach it to the tree, so you just kind of set it on a limb. And repeat; because it keeps falling off.
5. Handicapped Scrooge: I think A Christmas Carol's Ebenezer Scrooge might have been a little more considerate if he was like ours. We have a figurine showing the reformed Scrooge with Tiny Tim up on his shoulder, and his feet are broken off. It's nice to see a man with no feet carrying a crippled boy.

We also have plenty of tired ornaments, beaded styrofoam balls missing half of their beads and ancient colored glass balls will the paint chipping off, to name a few. That isn't to say we don't also have nice ornaments, but the ugly, odd, and broken ornaments are the ones that have stories.

Do you have any not nice ornaments that you keep around?

*Of course, most of the stupidity isn't a side-effect, but I can get a pharmacist who specializes in this class of medication to attest to the fact that my newest combo is actually making me less intelligent.

Mad Rabbit Santa

[bettiwettiwoo]

When my first husband's maternal grandfather died, all his possessions were divvied up between all remaining relatives, of which I was, at that stage, one. I immediately fell completely in love with the summit of kitsch: some sort of procelaine Christmas decoration that I swear looks like a mad rabbit dressed up as Santa Claus. It was one of the few things I insisted on salvaging from the gigantic mistake that marriage was. Have dragged it around with me across the globe. Still have it. And proud of it! Who

Memories aren't made of classy.

[Some Woman]

These are my favorites:

• Popsicle stick picture frame. This is from my personal collection and is four popsicle sticks glued together and painted with the phrase "Let it Snow." The frame holds a photo of Sandy, my sister's deceased dog, when she was a puppy. My niece made it for me about 7 years ago.
• Pasta angel. Who doesn't have one of these? It is on my parents' tree. I made it in Girl Scouts when I was 8 or so. Probably the same year that I made the fused bead Santa- another childhood classic.
• The fel

Re:

[janeowit]

We have a flat silver bell that has the name of our family's first dog, who died when I was 5. It might have the year on the front too, but the adorable part is the poorly done etching one the back that says "Pretty good dog". That was Sam, she didn't even earn a good dog, let alone a very good dog.

Pasta Angel? I don't know that one. Do you have a Clothespin Reindeer [kidsdomain.com]? We have several. Do you have the green painted puzzle piece wreath? I love that one.

It makes me so happy that you were able to get the felt

Re:

[Some Woman]

I think there used to be a clothespin reindeer, but I have no idea what happened to it. I'm positive that I made one in preschool or elementary school.

Pasta angel [karenrossi.com]. Ours has a folded piece of card stock between the elbow macaroni to look like a hymnal or whatever angels read.

Re:

[janeowit]

That's fancy. I mean, look at all the kinds of pasta! We never did that. We did more the pipe cleaner candy cane [crafts-plus.com] type crafts in school, where as little creativity and imagination is required.

I could just as easily use the phone, but I'm in a basement and intend to stay here for several more hours. When are available to enjoy the folkways of the holidays? Otherways we'll have to wait until May 27th!!! Oh the humanity!

Re:

[Some Woman]

I don't know. I'm still recovering from that crazy huge bash we threw on Sunday. One person totally came for most of it. And then a second person showed up for an hour. It was totally awesome.

Perhaps the Friday evening before Christmas? Or the weekend of New Years.

When are you done with finals?

Re:

[janeowit]

A week from Thursday, in the afternoon. I really intended on coming to both the party and the initation, but the cold truth was I needed to study for a pharmacology test on Monday morning. And I still only got 28/50 correct. It's a really good thing I did well on the one before. I have the cumulative final on Saturday, if I get 100% I will get a B-, I need a 67% to pass.
I'm doomed.

Re:

[Some Woman]

You're not doomed! You're going to win pharmacy school!

Re:

[Some Woman]

Speaking of clothespin reindeer, you should watch Sbe-mail 163 if you haven't already.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[janeowit]

That's an ornament!

Our TREE is not-classy

[TechnoLust]

It's a 3' tall fiber optic thing that my roommate's cleaning lady gave him. I'm going to draw a tree with ornaments and save it to SD card and use the Wii to show it on the big screen. :-)