Storybook Christmas Tree

I don't know how any of you are with Christmas Trees but I am nuts about mine.  There will never be another tree quite like my families, and ours really tells a great story. Ever since I can remember my mom made an extremely joyous task of trimming the tree.  I remember when I was little, my parents would go to the nearest YMCA and pick out the cheapest pine tree they could find.  No matter how little they spent on it, the tree was beautiful.  And when my mom got done stringing the lights her arms would be all poked up from the needles on the tree. 

During this time we didn't have as many ornaments so our tree would be pushed in a corner and the front would be decorated so that it looked extremely plush and full of ornaments, unfortunately one year it wasn't having any of the lopsidedness and toppled over (quite a few ornaments were shattered).  Since then we have accumulated hundreds of ornaments that we put on our massive (usually hovering around 8 ft) Frasier fur tree. I have come to be so attached to some of our ornaments, because they tell a story.  Each and every ornament has a meaning behind why it was purchased and why it is being hung on the tree.

I want to share some of my Christmas Story with you.

One of the ornaments on our tree was handmade by my grandma when she was young (about 25) and she had 3 little kids to care for, she was newly divorced and didn't have money to purchase ornaments so she made a whole bunch.  The one that she gave my mother was a little house she made out of cardboard, cotton balls and felt.

We have a ton of well known characters on our tree as well.  My favorites are the 7 Dwarfs.  I found this set at the Disney Store like 6 years ago and bought them just because they were adorable.  What made them different was that they were hand painted glass, since usually those type of ornaments are plastic.

We have a cake that clips on, a teapot that looks like it's pouring into a cup hanging a little lower, barbies and a bottle of wine with the year 2000 written on it, to remember the Millenium (I guess in part to celebrate that the world didn't blow up either) :-p

That is a good visual of some of our tree ornaments.  We have begun putting the ones that are specifically mine into their own bin so that when I move out I can just take them with me (I would not want any of my ornaments to be left behind), the tradition has to carry on :-). 

How about you, my lovely blog readers?! What is the best part about your tree, or you decorations in general??