Lucky Thirteen

In direct conflict with my desire to ease into Christmas this year, about a month ago I approached as many of my friends as were interested to see if they wanted to participate in an ornament/decoration exchange.  Despite the doubters suspecting I was going to sell their creations on Etsy, or that I was organizing an underground Christmas sweatshop, or possibly a madoff style Ponzi scheme but with tinsel, I had 15 people agree to join in. Yes 5 of them live in my house, and my sister Jenni also participated, but that’s still 9 people I’m not related to who were willing to participate.

I gave everyone 2 options. The first was sort of a one on one exchange where I gave them the name of another participant and their likes and dislikes, then they created 6 ornaments for their ‘partner’. Of course I ended up with an odd number of people who picked this option, so it was more a round robin than a one on one exchange. Option two was an all in, where instead of one person, they got 6 people and did 2 ornaments or so for everyone.  

It has turned out better than I expected. I went a little overboard because I opted to send something to everyone, even the one on one folks. So, typically, I haven’t finished everyone yet. But I’ll get there. 

There are wayyyyyyy too many ornaments to put the pictures up all at once. So I’ll space them out over several days.  Before I get to the pictures though, I want to say how very impressed I was by the skills, generosity, and taste of my friends. Like truly.  I thought the struggle would be in actually making 6 ornaments, but no, the difficulty is in JUST doing 6. 

These first batch include the ornaments made for my sister Jennifer, Donna, Lisa, and Autumn.

And then there are these. Matthew decided to embrace?, pursue? Promote? The German tradition of the pickle. Whoever finds the pickle on the tree Christmas morning gets a special present and a year of good luck.  So he styled a pickle for his partners and then gave them a second ornament that was 2 bells joined by a ribbon, or 2 pine cones, or 2 ornaments, I think you get the idea.  I mean... they aren’t terrible, but, well clearly his sense of humor comes from his mother.
  

Do me a favor? Look at, or think about your favorite holiday decorations. Smile if they are homemade, and or slightly ghastly or off color.