Do you love the holidays?

I am a big fan, and I treasure pulling out the things that I have inherited from family, as well as new things that M and I have acquired together. Above is a beautiful bird from Caspari, which M gave me as an early gift this year – the tag said – “Enjoy your tree twitter.”

My Mom has a ton of baskets and gave me one. To fill it, I found some pinecones in the woods on our property and lightly applied some glitter to the tips. The broom is a cinnamon-scented broom I got at a local country store. It makes the whole first floor smell of cinnamon, I love it!

M’s aunt knit him this enormous stocking. It is endlessly hilarious to me so I call it the ‘Club foot’ stocking. It stretches as you put stocking loot in it. Very retro-chic…. ahem. Anyway, so we have it on our mantel, then when we go to my family’s home we put it up on their mantel to be filled!

This is dim, but shows the craftsmanship. M was raised Lutheran, and his German family has attended this one church for years. When M was little, he and his grandfather made this church together. Stained glass and all. It actually is a music box. You can take off the top and look inside and the built-to-scale church. It is very sweet and one of few things that links M to his grandfather who died when he was in middle school. It is on a table in our hallway. The other lights are from a garland I wind up our stairs, and some figures that I have been given from my side of the family.

I will do another post of the ‘really old stuff’ later this week! Do you have any special Christmas artifacts from your family?