Heirloom Holiday Decorations

Last week while I was in Madison, I had a chance to duck into an antique store for awhile ALL BY MYSELF!! As I wandered through the store (it was one of those places with lots of different vendors), I was so inspired by all the lovely holiday ornaments and decorations for sale.  Vintage glass ornaments, classic Santa figurines, sweet ceramic cookie plates, handmade paper houses...really beautiful stuff!!  It made me wonder why anyone would want to buy the 'made in China' crapola that's available in so many stores.

Decorating the house for the holidays is a wonderful tradition.  As a child, I looked forward to unwrapping all the special ornaments and placing our vintage Santa on the fireplace mantel.  Sometimes my sisters and I would argue about who got to put up what....but regardless of sisterly spats, it was always a special evening where the whole family came together to decorate the tree.

And now that tradition continues on in my own home - except that I'm no longer the one who fights over the ornaments.  We have a wonderful collection of ornaments including a whole bunch of vintage glass ornaments from my husband's family, wonderful handmade ornaments from my family and lots of painted, wooden ornaments and other special pieces that I have collected over the years.

Whether you are just starting out or simply want to add to your holiday decor, here are a few suggestions:

• Raid Grandma's attic.  There could be a treasure trove of vintage decorations just waiting to be discovered!  You may not think of ornaments as family heirlooms but I'm a believer that everything special should be passed along to the next generation.
• Go antiquing.  Why buy brand new when when there are so many beautiful holiday decorations already out there just waiting to find a new home?  I picked up a couple of gorgeous glass teardrop ornaments from the 1950's on my latest antique store visit.
• Buy quality over quantity.  My rule of thumb is to buy 1 nice ornament each year.  By nice, I don't mean expensive, but rather something well made that just jumps out at me as being special. I plan to pass them down to my boys for their own Christmas trees someday!
• Make your own.  Homemade ornaments are THE BEST!!!  Especially when your kids make them.  My boys are not especially crafty, but I'm hoping to get them in on a special photo ornament idea that I've got brewing...
• Let nature inspire you.  Skip the cheap plastic holiday decorations and decorate with seasonal greens, pine cones, flowers....and fresh mistletoe of course!

This is my post for the Green Moms Carnival which is being hosted this month at the Green Phone Boothon December 10th.  Please stop by to read what all the other green Moms have to say on the topic of Greener Traditions.

{image from moxie-girl's photostream via flickr}

Comments

[NatureMom]

Love these tips! I raided my moms basement. ;)

[Condo Blues]

Favorite story: I got the nicest handpainted Christmas decoration from an then 8 year old nephew. I put it out the following year (and every year since.) He saw it and asked in mock boast, "Where did you get this? It's so NICE!" I just smiled and said, "A little Christmas angel gave it to me" as I walked out of the room to get something. I hear him run to his mom in excited tones say, "Mom she called me an ANGEL!"

[Micaela]

Great story - thanks for sharing!

[Summer]

Lovely ideas! I have a set of handblown glass ornaments given for my family's first Christmas with the kids. They are certainly more beautiful than the cheap plastic ones, and with care will be handed down to my kids in years to come.

[KiwiLog]

Hi! We loved your post over at KiwiLog and decided to feature it as part of our weekly parenting blog round-up. Thanks!

[Linda Anderson]

Another great source of treasured Christmas tree ornaments are the ones the kids make for you. I always write the year in indelible ink (where it doesn't show). As you pull them out of the storage box each year, you remember them fondly.

[Jennifer Taggart]

I love the vintage or homemade ornaments as well. They seem to have much more meaning. We buy Xmas ornaments as souvenirs when we travel and then when we put them on the tree, we relive our travel. We try to buy souvenir ornaments that are handmade by the locals - although I'm sure that some of them are just made for tourists but at least they are made locally. I have, for example, a small cloth doll figure from Fiji made by the local tribe - we use it as an ornament and relive our trip (before children, LOL!)

[Beth Terry]

I remember the excitement of getting out the box of ornaments from the basement and putting up the same ones year after year. The familiarity was really nice. And the tree decorated with all the miss-matched ornaments was so much more meaningful than trees that are decorated in all one color or following some kind of theme, imho.

[Diane MacEachern]

We get ornaments when we travel. It's an inexpensive way to pick up souvenirs of our trips, and it's fun to re-live all those experiences when we decorate our tree each December. Some of my favorites include a miniature calendar written in Japanese we came across in Tokyo; a whittled giraffe from Kenya; and a tiny urn from Greece. Happy holidays!

[Lisa]

Almost all of our ornaments are Hallmark ones that I have had forever (my family has been buying them since before I was born so I had a large number before getting married) and we only really buy Hallmark ones, yes they are made in China and not "eco" BUT they last forever and are high quality and reusable of course.

My grandma also said I can look through all of her's and take some of those, which is green and very cool since some will be hard to find ones.

We did buy some handmade ornaments from Etsy this year and I LOVE them and no one will have any like these and that's always cool.

[mother earth aka karen hanrahan]

i purchased something thematic each year for each child, santa for my son and angels for my daughter. now that they are older they have an entire collection to start off their own holiday traditions - since some of these ornaments are gosh 23 yrs old, that almost makes them vintage!!

[Erin aka Conscious Shopper]

When I was growing up, my grandma picked out an ornament for each of us every Christmas. I loved receiving the ornament more than the real present, and when I became an adult, I was really sad to stop receiving that annual ornament. I'm happy to say that my mom picked up the tradition with her own grandkids (including my three). Our tree is a crazy hodgepodge of ornaments every year, but there are oh so many memories.

[Schaufensterpuppen]

Well, interesting point, will have to rethink about that such an great idea. Need help in finding out best decoration stores. Thanks