Saturday, December 24, 2005

Dangly Sparkly Things

Continuing to post photos of some favorite Christmas ornaments -- begun here and here -- I'll finish up the theme today. We do have many more wonderful ornaments, of course, but I'm not going to post any more than these for one highly practical reason: I need to save some for posting next year, right?

I bought this one in a little store in the Pittsburgh Airport some years back, on my way home from a corporate training session for the company I was working for at the time. It was a store devoted exclusively to cutesy stuff relating to cats and dogs. Of course, anyone who actually spends time in the company of cats knows that this characterization of them is wholly inaccurate:



I love cats and always have and I can't imagine not having at least two around, but a halo? Come on. This next one is far more accurate:



This is a much better depiction of the "lazy freeloader" aspect of Feline-dom, I think.

Next is yet another set of ornaments from that Past Times company. (Wow, I bought a lot of ornaments from them over the years!) It's a six-piece set of painted glass ornaments forming a Nativity, right there on the tree. Here we have the baby Jesus and Joseph:



And here is Mary:



The set does include the three Magi, which are also on the tree. Now, when hanging these, we don't really try to group them all together so the entire "Tree Nativity" is visible from one spot. (Of course, if we were being really accurate in observing the doctrine, we wouldn't hang the Wise Men until after Christmas Day. But that's quibbling, isn't it?)

Finally, there is this, which is one of my absolute favorite ornaments ever. I bought this at a wonderful mall chain store, now closed, called The Museum Company. This store specialized in fairly high-quality reproductions and keepsake items inspired by the fine arts, and one year they had a selection of nautically-themed items: they had things like that whistle they'd use to signal the Captain's arrival on deck, or a spyglass, and the like. And they had some really neat ships-in-bottles, including this wonderful ornament:



That's all for this year. Tune in next year for more ornamenty goodness! (And tune in before that, of course, for non ornamenty goodness, of course.)

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