Lunch began in reverse order.
Yogurt then a sandwich.
I really wasn’t that hungry around lunchtime today thanks to a heavier-than-usual morning snack, so I initially thought I’d just have a cup of yogurt and an apple with peanut butter to tide me over until my afternoon snack.
Apparently the yogurt sparked my appetite because before I knew it, I was making myself a roast beef sandwich with cheese, lettuce, tomato and mustard.
Appetite satisfied!
Newlywed Ornaments
Last week when Ryan and I put up our Christmas tree, we had a good time looking at our ornaments. Our ornament collection is pretty sparse, but since we still don’t have a full-size tree, our limited stash of ornaments is just perfect.
(We’re waiting on purchasing a full-size tree when we can decide whether or not we want a real tree or a fake one. We both grew up with fakies, so we are rather indifferent to the whole “you must have a real tree” thing. My parents actually now get a real tree every year because they don’t want to store a fake one anymore!)
My family gave us a bunch of ornaments for our first Christmas as newlyweds last year as part of a German tradition. Apparently newlyweds are supposed to hang the following 12 ornaments on their tree to ensure happiness.
- An Angel – God’s Guidance in the Home
(We put our angel ornament on top of our tree.)
- A Rose – Beauty and Affection
- A Rabbit – Hope and Faith
(I love that little pink guy.)
- A Teapot – Hospitality
- A Pine Cone – Fruitfulness
- A Santa – Unselfishness and Goodwill
- A House – Shelter and Protection
- A Fruit Basket – Generosity
- A Bird – Happiness and Joy
- A Flower Basket – Good Wishes
- A Heart – True Love
- A Fish – Christ’s Blessing
Kind of a cute tradition, huh?
My all-time favorite Christmas ornament tradition is the annual hiding of the pickle ornament. It’s always so much fun. Hoping for a victory this year since my sister was the bright-eyed winner last year!
If you have any ornament traditions in your family, I would love to hear about them. Please feel free to share in the comments section! Reading about family traditions give me the warm fuzzies.
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Ahhh we also hide the pickle ornament – i LOVE doing that!!! And the newlywed ornament tradition is really cute – i’ve never heard of it before!
We have a hidden pickle too!
Our tradition is we buy Christmas ornaments on all our trips instead of souvenirs. We started it with our first trip to Key West when we were dating, and in the past eight years, we’ve collected so many ornaments. It’s so fun to see them again every year, and the quest for ornaments often becomes the highlight and focal point of any vacation!
Oh I loooove that idea… and you just gave me a Christmas present idea for Ryan!
I do the same thing!! And it’s funny to see the look on peoples faces when you ask them where the Christmas ornaments are in the middle of June. Ha! 🙂
Our tradition was for our dad to take the three of us girls out to lunch each year and he would also buy us each an ornament that we picked out. My parents’ hope was that when we were older and ready to leave the “nest” we’d have some ornaments of our own to start with. It is so funny to look back on now that we are all older and see the ornaments we picked. My husband and I love that our tree spans my whole lifetime, and his mom even gave us some of his ornaments from his youth to add to the collection. It keeps our tree youthful and fun. Not stuffy. Now, my parents take all of us and our spouses out to dinner each year and buy an ornament for us. They try to find an ornament that reflects something we love or something that happened to us this year. So thoughtful. I can’t wait to continue this tradition with my own family someday.
We have the hide the pickle ornament too! 🙂
I accidentally started one with my daughter (she is 5 now). Last year I bought 25 ornaments. Each day she would wave her magic wand over the “magic” box and it would “create” an ornament. She LOVED this and can’t wait to do it this year. Ummm….no we don’t have the tree up yet but I do have the ornaments. 🙂
I love the German tradition and the ornaments your family passed along to you. My boyfriends family hides the pickle in the tree! Each year my sister and I would get one new ornament to hang on the tree, we always got it either a bit before Christmas or on Christmas day!
A couple of years ago my mom started the tradition of giving each of us a new ornament every year. And the first ornament on my dad’s tree is always his Maryland Terrapin ornament (his alma mater). I don’t know if that last one really counts as a tradition, though.
We get an ornament on every vacation we take and date them! It’s fun to look back. We also have a wish ball and my bf and I write a wish New years eve and read it the following year
That sometimes happens to me – I don’t think I’m hungry for lunch so will have something small, then all of a sudden my appetite is ragin’!
We always hang up the same ornament every single year, many of them hand-crafted by me and my siblings which are almost falling apart….but they add a certain vintage-y feel to the tree.
A tradition that we have in our family is that one child gets to put the star on the top of the tree and having 3 siblings it always end up in a fight because its really the best part!
I only just heard of the pickle tradition! I bought my friend a pickle ornament for Christmas as she loves pickles but then read the box and learned of the tradition.
We don’t have any ornament traditions though, but once we have a family I’d love to start the pickle one.
Since I’m rarely home early enough to help my family decorate the tree now that I’m out in the working world, I always get so excited for the Christmas eve “Hanging of the Tinsel” fiesta!
It always is the messiest part of Christmas, which is I think why my parents make sure we wait until Christmas eve. I like to pretend it’s because they need my help….
This is my hubbys and my first married christmas and I just bought a “our first christmas” ornament that we hung on the tree last night, I love it!
We’ve collected one ornament a year since we’ve been married, 9 Christmas ornaments thus far. Our longtime goal is to finally have a tree decked out with only “our” ornaments. Each ornament has a sentimental thought behind it and both of us light up when we see them again. 🙂
our family tradition is each person receiving a new ornament each year. we try to make them relevant to the year in review. i started this tradition with my husband when we got married, so we buy each other a meaningful ornament. i even buy one for our dog!
This isn’t really a tradition, but when you said “newlywed ornaments”, I just had to share. My hubby and I got married last year, and bought these as part of our parents wedding gifts, and also got ourselves one: http://www.PersonalizationMall.com/Personalized-Christmas-Ornaments-Bride-and-Groom-Characters-i29227.item?productid=10069&sdest=Search&sdestid=18527245. Such a cute way to personalize your tree! Especially since you really do personalize the ornament with your hair color and all!
That’s a really cute idea with the ornaments. I grew up in a Hallmark household, so I got a new “series” ornament every year (I’ve only had 2 series though! 10 in one and 21 so far in the 2nd!). My husband didn’t, so we do yearly ornaments – he’d rather pick whatever he likes, I get my series (and whatever new Nightmare Before Christmas they put out), and we started a series of snowmen when we got married. It’s fun to us lol.
My family has an ornament tradition involving an ornament that is a bit hard to describe.
They are little “poof” balls that are shiny and look like a firework exploded to form a ball. They are always the last ornaments to go on the tree and they weigh less than an ounce so my sister and I get to throw them on the tree without worrying about any ornaments falling off. You must throw NO PLACING!
My sister and I no longer live at home but my Mom still saves them for us for when my sister is in town to garnish the tree. I always look forward to this tradition!
I have a similar tradition to others – my parents bought me an ornament every year and now they are all hanging on my tree in my house. I actually had someone last weekend look at my tree and ask “umm why is there a ninja turtles ornament on here?!” 🙂 …because Donatello is still the best, that’s why.
I think a real tree is definitely the way to go! I still get one every year because the process of going and picking one out is so fun to me. I have lots of happy memories of my brother and I getting so excited to pick out our tree and playing hide and seek all around the tree farms!
Santa brings us each an ornament in our stockings every year. This year, I asked Santa to bring a 1st Married Christmas ornament. I hope (s)he heard me.
I grew up with a fake tree, since my brother is allergic. We had a real one once or twice, but didn’t get anything last year since it was the first year with the dog. We used my mom’s tree to see how she would react. As expected, she likes to chew on wooden ornaments. This year we got a 4′ tree to put on a table. We’ll see how the doggie does.
I’ve never seen that tradition before, but I like it! Last year my mum bought me a kitchen mixer ornament, and I sure hope she’s got more kitchen gadget ornaments coming because the one I have is so cute!
I love the newlywed tradition! Thats cute! My family one year got nice ornaments with each of our names on them, we all like to make sure we hang up our own ornaments!
Growing up we were real tree people. Since we will be home for two weeks we didn’t bother getting a tree this year. My mom goes all out though, so I won’t miss out! She loves Teddy Bears – so she actually ties small stuffed bears to the branches. I love it when the Holiday Bears come out. She has Santas and Angels and favorites of my brother, sister, and I from childhood. The angel on top of the tree is a bear as well and it’s my job every year to put it on top – she saves it for me when I get home right before Christmas. I so love this tradition!
This is mine and my husband’s second Christmas together. Our first Christmas we bought a tiny little fake tree to go in our tiny little apartment. We had… wait for it… ONE ornament! We tried to make our little studio apartment cozy though! Here’s a picture of our little tree!
http://washingtondandc.blogspot.com/2010/11/christmas-time.html
I love the hidden pickle ornament! We have one too! My grandma used to have to wait until Christmas morning to hide the pickle because all us kids would start looking for it the moment she put up the Christmas tree and she said that was “cheating.” 😉
My grandmother made an ornament for our first married Christmas and each year it’s the very first we put on the tree and the very last we take off. Such a great little tradition!
I LOVE the 12 ornaments your family gave you- that’s so thoughtful!
How fun, I love your family’s tradition! We received a bunch of newlywed ornaments last year for our wedding and Christmas. Growing up both my husband and I had traditions in our families to receive a new Hallmark ornament each year. Each of us had a different collection and got to hang our collected ornaments. My collections included the Crayola ornaments and when those discontinued, I started collecting shoe ornaments. My husband has a lot of sports themed ones. It’s fun! I’m not sure if we’ll continue that tradition or not for our kids. I think it’d be fun, but it can be an expensive tradition too. Those ornaments aren’t cheap!
My mom gives us an ornament every year and so I have a whole collection of them collected over the last 28 years. This year was the first year in a long time that I put up a tree so it was really fun to unpack all of them and reminisce.
Also, in terms of real vs. fake- I grew up with a fake tree but have always secretly wanted to try out a real one… well this year we picked out our first real tree and I don’t think I will ever go back. It seemed a lot easy to pick up a real tree than assemble the fake one we had growing up, and I LOVE the way it smells 🙂
Love those 12 ornaments-what a thoughtful, fun tradition! This year is our first Christmas together as a married couple (we got married back in August) and my husband and I were so excited to put up our tree-a real one! We’d forgotten all about an ornament given to us last year-a gold tree that has a snowflake charm for each year attached to the bottom of it. I got a little teary-eyed adding on the “2011” charm. I can only imagine how long that thing is going to get years down the road!
Oh, our fam does the “hide the pickle” thing too, definitely carrying on that tradition 😉
I’ve never heard of this–but it’s a good one! We always get a real tree because we put REAL candles on the tree. My mom is Swiss, and that is how it’s done. She cringes when she sees fake trees. Hah.
LOVE sandwiches–sooo good!
that’s gutsy! and i bet it’s beautiful!
Until we get married, my mom always gives us a new ornament every year. It usually describes our year. For example, the year that I became obsessed with my goal to play collegiate volleyball and asked for all volleyball training tools for Christmas, my ornament was an elf holding a Christmas list that my mom wrote “Volleyball stuff, Volleyball stuff, volleyball stuff”. Last year, when I started eating a smoothie a day, I got a blender ornament! I have a feeling I’ll get a dalmatian one this year because of my new puppy!!
My parents would give my sister and I a new ornament every year to open on Christmas Eve. They started this tradition when we were born so when we moved out we would have a decent amount of ornaments to hang on our tree. My parents would chose ornaments that they really felt represented who we are (I have quite a few that pertain to shoppig, shoes, and coffee lol). This was great for me because my husband and I have only been married for two and a half years and I already had over twenty ornaments to add to our tree. Our tree looks fun and “youthful” 🙂
Ahh you should get a real tree! The smell that fills the house can’t be beat! And if you have a tree skirt, the pine needles that fall really aren’t that big of a deal. I get a real one every year just because I love the way it makes the house smell.
I like the idea of getting ornaments for every vacation you go on as a couple — i saw that from another reader. I may have to start doing it! I’ll have missed a few spots, but we can always go back for more!
I like having a fake tree. I don’t like the bugs, the dirt, and the upkeep of a real tree. I also hate the smell. I grew up with a fake tree and my grandparents always had a fake one too. My mom is actually allergic to real ones so I’m used to it! Our fake tree has lights in it, so we don’t decorate with ornaments. But I like fun traditions!
In the town I grew up in, we lived across from a big Christmas tree farm and gave them tons of business! Each year we would get the family tree, then my brother, sister and I each got our own trees for our bedrooms! It was so cool to fall asleep to the lights on the tree, and it always just seemed so special. Not to mention, the whole house smelled amazing!
This is a great tradition! I can’t wait until I have a wedding to go to now. I love that each othem have such a special meaning. My family never really had a tradition like that, but I did grow up in Germany and my mom bought ornaments from all the Countries in Europe when we were there. Our tree is very European 🙂
What a cute tradition! Love the bird ornament 🙂
Found this awesome 2011 mash-up today! Thought you would equally enjoy it due to your recent playlists.
http://mashable.com/2011/12/06/2011-hits-mashup-video/
What a cute tradition! Sorta like the fruits of the Spirit on a tree… kinda. Well, a while ago i left a comment asking about how y’all liked Shakespeare when you were in high school, as i was about to do some. Well i managed to get a book like the one you described, though probably not the same one. I just finished Julius Caesar. It was a little tough, but there were translations so no biggie 🙂 I used the Oxford School Shakespeare and would highly recommend it for anyone who cares or maybe has a high schooler of their own. Def. recommended for fellow home schoolers! Now i have to do a book report on it…. oh darn. Just got a page of it finished and came over to pbf for a break. Glad i did!
p.s.- sorry for the long comment!
that sandwich looks delicious!
this is so embarrassing, but we have a box of “newlywed ornaments” that we got when we were married (2 years ago) and we have never had a tree… so… they’re still in the box! i guess it will be a nice surprise when we have a christmas tree 🙂
What a great tradition to start!
Haha, too funny…Being German myself, I have NEVER heard of this tradition, but I LOVE it…
Good to know. And thanks to you, I learn something about my own home country…:-)
I think this is such a cute tradition! Plus, it’s something that you will remember forever. 🙂
Thats a cute little tradition! The ornaments are adorable. I really like the pinecone! ha
We always hid baby Jesus. Crazy, huh? Each year one family member would hide baby Jesus, and then he would appear on Christmas morning. Sometimes he would be found before Christmas and would have to be re-hid. But one year… no one ever found him. Oops. So now we have a nativity without baby Jesus. Bad bad bad!
ha!!
I’m not sure that this is really a tradition, but my (german) Oma is very particular about her tree. When my mom and her siblings were kids, Oma would never put the ornaments they made at school on the tree because she said they were tacky. Once she had grandchildren, she just told us not to give them to her because she wants her tree to be all silver ornaments and white lights — no “tacky” colors. It’s just really funny (and not offensive) to the whole family that Oma, who usually wants to show off and brag about her children and grandchildren, won’t put any homemade ornaments on the tree ever.
I love that tradition, so cute! I’m going to have to steal it when I get married :). My family does the ‘hide the pickle’ thing too, which is always fun. We also get an ornament each year from my parents to put in our ‘ornament box’ so that when we get married, we will have plenty of ornaments to decorate our own tree. I think I actually have a pretty big collection now!
This isn’t a “good” tradition and it involves friends not family, but it’s hysterical nonetheless. Every year our friends have the whole “group” over to their house for a Christmas dinner/party usually a week or so before Christmas. My husband’s friends are crazy, they were totally the boys that got in trouble all the time in high school and their antics continue even at 31. So every year, someone sticks an ornament hook in some sort of food appetizer (think pigs in a blanket kind of stuff) and hangs it on the tree, usually in an inconspicuous spot. Without fail, it will start smelling and getting moldy on the tree a few days later until the hosts figure out where the smell is coming from and take it off. Last year, their 3 yr old daughter came into the kitchen eating it and said “look mom, I found this on the tree!” Hahaha It’s horrible and disgusting but funny 🙂
That is just TOO funny, lol! I think some friends of mine are gonna have a brand new tradition to deal with…. 🙂
My group of friends does a gift swap every year where the gifts are mostly x rated (and hilarious). When the party was at our house a few years back, someone dipped a tampon in ketchup and hung it on our tree and I didn’t notice untuil days later…Classy!
lol! My families tradition for christmas trees has always been waiting until the last minute to get the tree and ending up with a charlie brown christmas tree – someone has to show the scraglie ones some love!!
The funniest thing that ever has happened is when I was in highschool we had just loaded the tree on top of the car, tied it down and started down the road toward home. It was only a 5 min drive, and I jokingly commented, wouldn’t it be funny if the tree feel off the car. At that moment, ‘Whooooosh’, and the tree was in the other lane with a car barreling towards it. The car ran over the top 1/3 of the tree and just kept going. My dad jumped from the car, scooped up the tree and threw it back on the car. Tied it down tighter and we headed home. When we got home and assesed the damage we deamed the tree decoratable and that was a very special charlie brown chirstmas tree!! haha Best Christmas Tree we have ever had!!
Now my husband and I do a fakie and I dont like it… but it saves money!
My Mom gives me 2 Christmas ornaments every year and my husband’s Mom did the same thing. They still do it even though we are married. We have continued the tradition and buy ornaments on every trip we take. It makes it really fun when you start pulling everything out. I want to do the same thing for my kids.
We always open one gift on Christmas Eve in our pj’s and the rest on Christmas morning while NSYNC and Elvis play.
My extended family has a fancy dinner on Christmas day, but we eat pizza on Christmas Eve. it started when my Grandmother was in the hospital one year and it’s stuck around. Man, I love the holidays!! And what a unique idea from your parents..I’m going to steal that for a wedding present!