Bright Angel

I keep thinking that I made this angel in second grade...but I'm not sure that's right if I also made my Corncob Doll in second grade. This one could have been a church ornament. I definitely remember painting her and I remember that I wanted her to have dark hair (like me). As you can tell, I branded her with a large "J" so that no one would steal her. Because I'm sure she would have fetched a pretty penny on the black market.

Each year, when I put her on the tree, I was always very proud of her. I almost always chose bright colors for my artwork as a child. Clearly, this angel is no exception. 

Interestingly, my son just told me that she looks Chinese. I guess the outfit resembles a kimono and of course there's a certain geisha quality to the white skin and red lips, I suppose. In truth, I was just trying to create an angel that looked like me. 

Fat Devil-Child

Every year my Mimi gave me an ornament around Christmas. Her ornaments are the base upon which my entire ornament collection is built. That yearly gift is probably a big part of the reason I give each of my kids and my husband an ornament every Thanksgiving Day. (I started that tradition long before I had kids, by the way – my husband has a bunch of ornaments from me. Twenty, I guess.)

She gave me this ornament in 1983. So, if the engraver accurately recorded the year I was 12 years old. (My daughter is almost 12…that’s a little freaky.) I remember when getting items engraved was all the rage.

Check it out – the engraving was done freehand. Nowadays I think it’s the case that computers and machines do the engraving so it’s all perfect. But this brings back memories of watching the engravers at work in those little kiosks in the mall. I used to be SO impressed with them – my handwriting wasn’t so hot as a pre-teen and I imagined that the pressure to write well must have been intense. I also wondered what happened if they messed one up – did they have to pay for it themselves?

Okay, okay. So I tended to over think things just a bit. Thank goodness I’ve outgrown that tendency, right?

I simply must point out a couple of odd things about this ornament which never occurred to me until tonight, when I really examined it. First of all, the kid putting the letter into the mailbox has a rather big butt. It's hard to tell with this picture, but when you see it in person, you can tell they included a butt crack on the outside of his/her pants. So the kid is either fat or is wearing tight pants. Or maybe both.  At any rate, I don’t think those pants are doing him/her any favors in the fashion department.

In addition, I guess this kid is supposed to be an angel because he/she has wings. But the wings don’t strike me as very angelic. They have sharp points. Isn’t that a devilish look? Makes me wonder if there are horns under his/her hat.

I’m kind of regretting taking a closer look at this ornament because now it looks to me as if an unfashionable devil-child with a really big butt is mailing a letter. Guess that’s what I get for over thinking…

I’ll end with a funny story about this ornament. My husband kept trying to steal it from me during our first two or three years of marriage. You see, his sister’s name is Jennifer (she’s just a month younger than me…yet another 1971 Jennifer) and she had an ornament EXACTLY like this. Every time I’d pull it out, he’d say: “Hey, that’s my sister’s. We need to give it back to her.”

Um. No we don’t. Hands off my fat devil-child, dude!

Baby Mouse

As I understand the story, my mom made this ornament (and the rest of the matching set) for my first Christmas (or maybe it was just the first Christmas when I was scooting around - which technically would've been my second Christmas...). She wanted ornaments that wouldn't crash when they inevitably ended up on the floor.

This set didn't mean a whole lot to me until I inherited it at the age of 28, when I was expecting my first baby. They've been part of my tree ever since, which probably isn't fair - since I had the first grandchild. I suppose I should have passed them on to my brother at some point since he had babies after I did.

Oh, well.

Knowing my mom, she probably had a set for him also. She's actually really great about that kind of stuff. She was born to be a grandmother and I've never seen anyone get so excited about babies.

I love the way this baby mouse was on my tree when I was in diapers and then popped back into my life when I was getting ready to become a mom. He's stayed in great shape, when you consider how insanely old he is. I guess if I was carefully wrapped in tissue paper and stored in the attic every January, I might be in pretty good shape too.