Ornament obsession

As I've blogged about in this week's post on MangoJuiced, I've gotten over the whole matchy-matchy Christmas tree. I've started migrating the red-and-gold ornaments that we bought in Landmark for our first Christmas to other places, like our dining room chandelier and this tabletop lamp.

What's made me reconsider our Christmas tree? I've made a few Canadian and American friends for whom the addition of one new, special ornament to the tree every year is part of the family holiday tradition. No themed trees, no matching sets—just a collection where every piece was chosen because it was pretty and special in itself. 

The idea of carefully selecting and slowly building up a collection of cherished ornaments has started to really appeal to me. Somehow, it fits in perfectly with the wearing-off of our newlywed excitement. That's not a bad thing, by the way—after four years, I've simply realized that Marlon and I are going to be together for a long, long time. That means many, many Christmases together... and lots of time to collect ornaments. 

These are some of the ones we chose to jumpstart our new, non-matchy collection. The only thing our ornaments should match are the memories we've made around them. I know I'll always remember these as being from our first Christmas in Amsterdam. 

I got the "antique" mirrored star and porcelain bird at the Osdorp Tuincentrum, a mind-bogglingly huge garden warehouse turned Christmas emporium where we shopped for our decorations. The clear glass ball with the feather (which reminds me of the final scene from Labyrinth) is from De Bijenkorf, Amsterdam's oldest department store.

The floral ball reminds me of India, and the red ornament is actually a capiz chesa from... the Philippines! I was elated to find both in a fair trade boutique in Haarlem. The black bauble was Marlon's choice, and I have to admit it looks pretty cool. 

A blown glass owl, a tiny delicate winged horse, an odd little Santa gnome, and Santa baking in his kitchen: these are the ornaments we bought on our visit to the Christmas markets in Cologne, Germany. The German Christmas markets are like the Disneylands of Christmas and deserve a separate post all together! So many beautiful hand-blown and hand-carved ornaments there made it excruciatingly hard to choose, but we managed to keep it down to these. 

Which of the new ornaments do you like best? And do you have any special ornaments in your family? I'd love to know!