Ornaments 2009

First of all, I am sadly not a good photographer. Secondly, the camera is about 6 years old. So forgive the quality of these photos and let me tell you anyway how excited I am about our Christmas ornaments this year! I'm not even sure why.
I grew up from the time I was 4 getting my very own Christmas ornament every year. It's a tradition I enjoy still and have continued for the last 10 Christmases since I got married.
Many years we get the ornament to coincide with something we did that year, but with my kids still being little right now there's not always a major event to match an ornament to. It occurred to me that my mom did many years where the whole family got ornaments of a similar theme. My favorite one is a little ceramic mouse climbing on a star, so I thought it would be fun to find some ceramic ornaments and take the time to paint them all oh-so-cute. Looked around a little bit and they were either too expensive or not that cute. (And seriously, would I have really gotten them done in time?)
Enter a visit to Wal-Mart. Lots of things to complain about with that store, but every once in a while I find a silly cheap thing that is just what I wanted! I came across a collection of gold tone ornaments. They were only (as you can see in the pictures) $2.50! I found some that worked for our family and thought they might be okay.
At some point I wondered if there would be a way to get color onto them. Paint seemed like it would flake off and be hard to do. I remembered some markers we got to color the pumpkin at Halloween, but they were too watery to stay on the metal surface. Then I grabbed my black fine point Sharpie marker and started to color on Logan's penguin. It worked! I found some more markers in other colors and went to town on the ornaments. I think they turned out pretty cute for the minimal cost and effort. I love it when a plan comes together!:o)

Luke's Snowman

Rebecca's Puppy

Ross and Janet's Angel Kids

Logan's Penguin

Samantha's Kitty

The "Before" look