A Very Vintage Christmas

O tannen bonbon, originally uploaded by boopsie.daisy.

I inherited my love of vintage and kitsch from my mom, who has a truly envious collection off vintage Christmas ornaments and other knickknacks. Now that I've grown up, moved away, and am trying to get a handle on this whole "being an adult" thing, it's up to me to start to build my own collection.
Growing up, we would each pick out one new ornament a year to add to the tree, which we always got from my uncle's tree farm. My cousins and I used to playwork on the farm (my cousin Katie and I were mainly on hot cocoa duty while the boys helped cut down trees), and I can't tell you how many times we tried to shove each other through the tree bagger (a shoot and funnel type thing that put netting around the tree) the first year my uncle got it. It didn't matter how pretty our tree looked all decorated up, and believe me, most of the time it was a "so ugly it's cute" kind of tree, each of the ornaments was special.
Last year was my first Christmas since I moved away from home and I got the first ornament for my very own collection. My dad's neighbor hosts an annual ornament swap, which I thought was a really cute idea, in a kind of Yankee swap fashion. At the end of the whole thing, I think I ended up with some weird metal star or cross thing. Either way, it really wasn't my style, so my dad traded me for his glittery frog ornament, which is still pretty weird, but at least it's my kind of tacky. So now every year I'm going to have a giant sparkly frog on my tree. Maybe when I get more ornaments I'll be able to kind of hide it in the back or something. This year I have my sights set on a cute orange kitty in a santa hat.

Growing up is kind of bittersweet. While I miss being able to make candy cane reindeers and watch the Rankin and Bass stop motion Christmas movies (which are still some of my favorite movies ever) with my mom, I look forward to being able to share all of the Christmas traditions with the family of my own that I'll create some day.

After the link are a few inspirational Christmas pictures that I found on flickr.

christmas cookies 109, originally uploaded by hello naomi.

Holiday Happy bundle, originally uploaded by Happy Zombie.

If you like this fabric as much as I do, go on over to her blog and try your luck with the current charm pack giveaway.

(I bet you five bucks this made my mum cry)