Since the day I decided to follow my husband across the country, I have adopted “home is where the army sends us” as a motto, and it quickly became the guiding principle behind this blog. I strive to bring elements of design that will make us happy and represent both of us, in every space, no matter how small, cold, or unwelcome our surroundings can seem.
At Christmas it’s not always easy to blend two very different expectations for Christmas traditions and the decor, especially when you’re far from family. I come from a family where two Christmas trees in the house is par for the course, while he comes from a family with one big tree (at each house). In my family, the holidays are more about relaxing, while he sees it as his duty to travel to see every member of his family. At least we can both agree on our love of Christmas movies this time of year! It’s exhausting trying to create our own special brand of Christmas, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything because in the process of bickering over who gets what & when, we’re creating our own Christmas and holiday traditions.
The first year we had a christmas tree I decided to start a military christmas tree ornament collection that would showcase our journey through the country with the military. A nice reminder of where we’ve been and where we’re going.
At the time, I happened to be walking through Omer DeSerres craft store when I stumbled upon these awesome wood maple leafs for about 3$. They had so much potential, so I jumped at the opportunity! You can’t get more patriotic than a maple leaf, and since they were blank I could style them how I wanted. I bought one for every posting we’ve had, a couple blank ones for future postings.
I’ve seen different variations on “places we’ve been” and “home is where the army sends us” in terms of daily decor and nick-nacks, but for our tree I wanted something simple. I know where I’ve been, I don’t need a reminder year-round (although these are great ideas for posting gifts).
Making the ornaments was dead simple: I started by drilling holes through which to hang the ribbon, then I painted them red, and outlined the edges in white before hand-painting the name of the base and years we were there. I tied them off with some spare burlap, and boom! We have Christmas ornaments.
They were super quick and easy to do (in the grand scheme of crafting). They’re a great way to tie-in our life in the military, and will be a subtle reminder as the years go on, of where we’ve been and experiences we’ve had.
Do you commemorate your postings through military christmas ornaments?
Every place we travel we buy the tackiest cheapest tourist things that represent that area or country. These are not ornaments so I hot glue some ribbon. We also buy a really nice ornament from each area we have been posted. Our tree tells the story of all of the places we have lived and travelled to, all of our adventures and the wonderful people we have met along the way.
I love it! We`ve got other smaller ornaments from the places we honeymooned. We actually have a collection Starbucks mugs from all the places we`ve traveled to. We invite our friends to get them for us, and in exchange they get coffee free coffee at our place for life!