Photo courtesy of craft.dow.com
It has been a wild ride since you last heard from me, here. If you also read my Grandma’s Sewing Cabinet blog, you already know that my “baby” sister (she’s 9 1/2 years younger than me) and her husband became “insta-parents” last week when Baby Alice decided that she didn’t want to take any chances with my sister and brother-in-law finding another baby to adopt and was born at 30 weeks. She is already a little spit-fire and will get to come home when she weighs 4 pounds.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to write about today. Needless to say, my thoughts are consumed by how to help my sister. And then I read Holly’s posting on her Sweetheartville blog from yesterday about styrofoam Christmas decorations and I was transported back to my childhood.
While other families had expensive crystal and china Christmas decorations and trees meticulously arranged, our home was filled with The Three Wisemen made by my sister Jan using toilet paper rolls, styrofoam, felt, and pipe cleaners (which stood next to the Nativity Scene that my mother had bought from the dimestore when my parents were first married and a Baby Jesus figurine spray painted gold), Santas made from construction paper (with the beard patiently made from white paper strips wrapped around pencils to make them curl), Christmas cards strung along the walls after the louvred doors were full, and all of the Christmas crafts that had been brought home from school by four and then five children. We brought home Santas made from construction paper and cotton balls and construction paper garland, among other things. And, I’m vaguely remembering some sort of toothpick Christmas tree but I’m not sure about it.
And, as if this all wasn’t enough of a Christmas craft-o-rama hodgepodge, we made tree ornaments out of styrofoam balls. We probably got the idea from magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens or, more likely, Sunset. The thing is, we were never able to replicate the beautiful styrofoam ornaments that were showcased in the magazines. As my sister Jan noted, the glue never stuck and the ribbons would slide off and we were always disappointed with the outcome. Nevertheless, these ornaments found their way onto the tree (along with the icicles that always managed to be clompy instead of evenly dispersed).
I went through a period where I just wanted the home magazine decorations and all of their perfectness. I would fondle the Lenox ornaments as soon as they arrived in the department stores. But, the truth of the matter is that despite all of the chaos, those craft-o-rama decorations are tugging at my heart this evening.
Our Styrofoam ornaments certainly didn’t look like those in the picture!!! You have to give mom props for loving our hand-made ornaments and displaying them with pride. She never once made us feel ashamed of our work. (I loved the clumpy tinsel comment- oh so true!) And you KNOW how much I hated my three wise men. I would knock them over every time I walked by and watched their heads roll. Or I would put their heads on upside down or backwards.
Jan, I was telling The Mister the other day about the spray-on snow that we sprayed on the windows using stencils. I’ll bet if we went back to our childhood home, some of that stuff is probably STILL stuck on the windows.
Great post! Congratulations to you and your family on the new arrival. I hope she gains weight quickly and is home soon!
I am making a real effort to teach my daughter the joy of making things with one’s own hands. The most dear ornament on my tree is one I made my 10th Christmas with my mother and grandmother at the dining room table. It’s just a plastic curtain ring with a red felt circle backing. A wisp of Polyfil stands in for snow, and a plastic Santa and his reindeer are set at a jaunty angle inside. My Grandma has been gone for many years now. She never knew her great grandchildren. Every time I look at that ornament, I am reminded of the many happy times we spent crafting, painting, and gluing things together as a family. Merry Christmas to you and yours.
(Julie’s note: Jill is my “baby” sister and Elaine is her BFF and like another sister to us)
As you know, Drew and I decorate our tree fairly momochromatically and Victorian, aside from the Star Trek and Star Wars ornaments, of course. But one ornament (that hung on the MEars tree every year until I moved out) is a walnut colored red and green with pipe cleaner as a hook that Elaine made for me when we were little. I love that ornament!!
I read the posts with tears in my eyes (which is better then “tears in my ears-as the song went) as I recalled all those precious ornaments. I do remember the walnut(which was suppose to be the manger) and I would get so upset with Jan for sending the wisemens heads flying. There was also the soap bottle, cloth draped wisemen. You’re memory is correct about the toothpick Christmas tree. Then there was the pink and white feather tree( I think I won that at S.S. party). How about those stocking that were used year after year, hung on long cords because we didn’t have a mantel to hang them on. They started looking really, really tired and smoke stained. We could never buy a tree or presents until your Dad would get his bonus check, but I would start putting out one decoration on Dec. 1st. and add one a day and you kids would come home and guess what had been added. That got to be too much work and it was easier letting you kids help. June had made a Santa head out of a glass chimney and Santa hat in Mrs. Scott’s forth grade class, she took that with her when she moved. One of kids made the mobil santa that hung from the light in the hall (I am not sure but I think that too was made in Mrs. Scott’s class).
I have several Nativity sets now but none are as special as that first one(the one you mentioned Julie) which I bought the first year we were married.
Do any of you remember the year we won the $620 from the radio contest? Julie you answered the phone “Merry Christmas KGIL” and that was going to be the last call that the station was going to make that year. I didn’t believe them at first because friends were always calling us pretending they were from KGIL. We bought a small color TV for the family and paid bills. That was fun.
Mrs. Claus would wrap presents until 1a.m. and Santa would deliver them. Then June would start in at 3a.m. wanting to get up.
We have been richly blessed over the years.
Boy did I just go down memory lane.
Oh my gosh!!! I remember the walnut AND the Santa head! I also remember the cloth draped wise men…I didn’t know they were made out of soap bottles… I HATED the wise men that I had made- but Mom would get SO mad at me for hiding them and knocking them over, it almost became a fun game to see if she would notice (tee hee). And yes, I remember the Christmas we won from KGIL. Winning that was as exciting as getting the gifts. And I always looked forward to getting the Sears Christmas catalog where we would write all of our Christmas wishes for Santa.
I remember making those Styrofoam ball ornaments in the 70s!
That would be the right timeline for us, too, HB. We made them in the 60′s and 70′s.
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Great Post! Congratulations on the addition of a new baby neice to the family!! I just saw a show on “celebrity homes at Christmas” and the decorator for Kathy Lee’s house used styrofoam ball wrapped in strips of old plaid shirts – I thought they were great! Our Ornaments had a magical quality to me growing up. We had some super fancy styrofoam balls that where encrusted with sequins and beads and were carved out in the middle to hide a manger scene. This ornament was worth millions to me. BUt, the ornament I most dearly love from my Childhood is a little 4″ angel holding a little baby sock baby. This ornament looks very “crafty” and homemade, and I was, am, very attached to it, I loved putting it on the tree every year, we would compete to see who could get the highest ornament on the tree. Anyway, I was shocked a couple of years ago when I was at my parents house to see a “Hallmark” tag on the ornament!!! It rocked my world. And, I was equally shocked that my Mom mailed me this ornament last year. Am I so old??? After all those years of longing for this ornament, and fighting my brothers and sisters to put it on the tree. I guess I am! Well, it looks like my son has the nostalgia bug too. Last week I brought home a box of old kitchy non-breakable ornaments I won at a pirate pollyanna – and while decorating the tree, he says “I remember these ornaments”. Ha ha ha, well they do look like ornaments you would remember, a dog head in a wreath, a plastic buble with a paper picture of a goebel angel, etc – and he will remember them when he is older! Merry Christmas Dr. Julie!!
With my mother in the lead, I began making “peek-a-boo” styrofoam ornaments in the late 1950s according to magazine instructions. I remember a packet of Victorian paper angels and other designs, many old Christmas cards from which to cut scenes, gold rickrack, ribbons and other trims. From there we branched out to “boutique” balls which my mother made annually for the next 25 years. She not only decorated a small tree with those hand-made ornaments but also made an ornament for everyone at her Thanksgiving table. My interests have moved on from that, but I still cherish the memories of making Christmas ornaments. Thanks for the post.