New Ornaments - 2017

When I travel, the only souvenir I buy are Christmas ornaments. (And maybe some other cute thing for my gallery wall.)

Then each year as I'm decorating my Christmas tree, I can reflect on all the fun travels I've had over the years. This year I got a new tree from Target. It's 5.5ft, but I ran out of branches to hang ornaments on, so I think I'll need to get a bigger one in the future! Or maybe just not travel anywhere in the future?

This year, I added quite a few new ornaments. I tried to put them in chronological order, but that didn't work out. So instead, you just get them randomly.

Here is my tree:

I love it so much! I'm biased, but I think it's the prettiest tree ever.

In December I went to Disneyland in California and we did the "Walk in Walt's Footsteps" tour around the park. At the end we got a button for our lanyards (which I don't have cause I'm not a regular), but it's way too heavy for a lanyard and I'm never going to actually wear it as a pin, so I made it an ornament!

I found these really cute ornaments at Michael's on clearance (70% off) a few weeks before Christmas and I loved how they looked vintagy  but tied all of my colors together. And because one of the 12 in the box was broken, I got an additional 15% off!

 

Last year on my drive home from Charleston on New Year's Day.....the super long drive.....I stopped in an antique store somewhere around Rock Hill, SC and got six vintage ornaments. Pictured below is the yellow one, but there's also green and blue. The white stripes are actually white glitter! Love.

In February when Mom and I visited Charleston, we went to see the Angel Oak tree. I had tried to find it back in December, but was unsuccessful. It was a really cool tree and I got this ornament to commemorate our visit. 

When I visited my godsons last weekend to take them their Christmas gifts, the oldest one gave me two ornaments he and his mom made out of salt dough. One was a Block O and one was a snowflake. I love these! :)

When Cara and I visited Texas in June, our first stop in the Lone Star State was the George W. Bush Presidential Library. They didn't have a 2017 ornament yet, so I just ordered this one earlier in December and got it in time for Christmas. President Bush painted this ornament. (Well, the original picture was painted by him.)

While in Dallas we also visited the home of the Ewing family - Southfork Ranch! It was awesome and Cara and I geeked out in all of our Ewing love glory.

My godsons got me this ornament with a picture from the little one's baptism this fall. He got me one last year, too, so I hope we can start an annual ornament exchange!

In July I went to Florida for Alicia's bachelorette party. We stopped in Auburn, Alabama on our way back to Atlanta and I got this ornament. It came in a package of two, but I do not need two ornaments on my tree from that SEC team.

Back in May some of my students went on a study abroad trip to England and one of the girls brought this ornament back for me because she knew I collected ornaments. 

While Molly and I were in California we went to a variety of places on our last day and one of them was the Santa Monica Pier.

On our last day in Texas back in June, we went to the LBJ Presidental Library. For students, it was only $3 to get in! Bargain shopping!

To commemorate my trip to Disneyland, I got this Mickey ornament of Sleeping Beauty's castle.

I cleaned out a bunch of stuff in my bedroom at my parents house while I was home for Christmas/New Years and found this ornament that my grandma painted in 1992! How cute is this? She used to paint all of the time, so I'm glad that I have this. 

 

That's all my ornaments from 2017! One that I didn't add, because I just wasn't ready yet, was something for my grandpa. I know what I want it to be, but just haven't made it happen yet! Maybe for 2018!

My ornaments from other years:
Christmas 2015
Christmas 2013
Christmas 2012

(Apparently I missed a few years!)