I love...ornaments.

Ta-da! My Christmas tree is officially decorated!
 

See:

 

It's actually been decorated for over a week now, which is pretty good for me. Normally there is the long process of bringing it in the box down from the attic and letting it adjust to the hallway for a few days; then taking it out of the box and letting it adjust to standing upright for a few days; then I start to put on the lights but get annoyed when one strand goes out so I leave it in the corner in shame for a few more days; then one Sunday I finally fix the lights, add the ornaments, and...BAM: it's Christmas all up in my apartment.

Nope, this year I made it all happen in one day. It's probably because I'm getting to be more mature and responsible with age...ahem...



Disco ball ornament

When it comes to decorating my tree, for the past few years I've used purple lights and a set of silver ornaments. They consist of round ones, skinny ones, big ones, little ones, and sparkly ones.

There's even a few small ones that look like this disco ball ornament (did someone say "tree par-tay"?!):










However, wanting to add a little extra "Jenny" to my tree each year, I have happily acquired new ornaments that I throw into the Christmas tree decorating mix. Here are a few of them:



Save the Date ornament

My friend Colleen and I handmade this ornament in 2007. The bug (on the left) is a tribute to a small bug that we saw the previous summer. We were sitting outside our friend's house in Little Italy during the Feast and it was hot...really hot. We saw an adorable little bug on the sidewalk (and for me to call a bug adorable takes a lot), it was one of those little wooly/fuzzy bugs and it was just inching along. Suddenly it started flipping around like it was dancing. Then...it stopped. It died right in front of us! Of course we'd both seen dead bugs before and seen others or ourselves squish bugs, but never seen one die all on its own. For weeks after that we told all of our friends about the story of Little Bug (as we dubbed him) and his story became a part of our group. We drew him on magnets that we made for our birthday party invites...then we drew him on this Save the Date ornament, which was an invite to a joint party we threw for our friends Rachel & Matt that year. A few of our friends tell us that they still hang their ornament up every year...and so do I!



Chicago ornament

This ornament was a favor from my friends' wedding in Chicago several years back. It was a great weekend - we sang karaoke at their rehearsal dinner (hosted at a delicious pizza restaurant), celebrated their beautiful wedding in the Sears Tower (I know..."Willis Tower"), and toured the city. I thought that this favor was a sweet idea and now every Christmas when I hang it up on my tree I think of them and that great weekend.














S'more ornament

I got this ornament at an ornament exchange party a couple years ago. A bunch of friends were back in town for the holidays, so we all got together to catch up, eat, drink, and exchange ornaments! The ornaments were all wrapped so we didn't know what we might be getting and we passed them back and forth until finally whatever ornament you were holding was the one that was yours for keeps. I unwrapped mine to find this adorable marshmallow guy! And up until the moment when I leaned in close to take this picture, I thought it was simply that - just a cute marshmallow guy sitting on a piece of wood. Upon closer inspection...I have now realized it's actually a s'more guy! Even cuter! I guess you learn something new about your Christmas tree ornaments every year. That's a saying, right...?








Youngest child ornament
 

Last year my mom got me and my sisters each our own ornament. This was mine and it says "youngest child", because, well, I'm the youngest child. My ornaments don't lie!

 



Pickle ornament

And then there's this one. It's a pickle. I think my mom also gave me this ornament one year and said it is a Christmas tradition for people to hang pickles on their Christmas tree and that it brings good fortune in the year ahead. I didn't question her, though have since Googled it and confirmed that it is indeed true. So now, every year, I have a pickle on my tree. Yay! Bring on the fortune.



And that is the tour of my Christmas tree ornaments. Now for the next few weeks I get to enjoy the lit up Christmas tree each night as the holiday spirit takes over my apartment. Until, of course, I need to start the process of UNdecorating the tree: removing the ornaments and getting annoyed when they all don't fit in the very same container I kept them in the year before; taking off the lights; waiting a few days then folding up the tree and getting annoyed when it doesn't fit in the same box that it also did NOT fit in the year before; then tying it up and putting it back up in the attic.

 

But who wants to think about that, so for now I'm just going to enjoy this wonderful Christmas tree night light filled with lots of happy memories and disco dance party possibilities. Tis the season...to disco!



I love...weekend stories.

This weekend I slept with a pilot.

Okay, I guess I should probably start from the beginning of my weekend to explain how this came about. Here's what happened...

Friday I woke up with a bit of a cold. I'd felt it coming on for a couple days, but Friday it was in full force. This was a bummer since I had a wedding to go to over the weekend, so I decided to push through and ignore it. Friday night I went to ABC Tavern in Ohio City to celebrate my friends' 30th, 31st and 32nd birthdays. I gifted them each with a light-up yo-yo...I think they enjoyed them (yo? yo!). I made it somewhat of an early night since I was getting up extra early the next morning to catch a flight to Charlotte, NC for the wedding.

Saturday morning I was up before the sun. My cold was still hanging around, but I continued to ignore it. I got to the airport and flew to Charlotte with no problems. Some family friends were kind enough to pick me up and let me stay with them. We had lunch, caught up and then got ready for the wedding. The wedding was for my friends Adam & Kelly. It was a wonderful, outdoor wedding, the bride was beautiful and they both looked so happy! The reception was a great time and I got to see a lot of people that I hadn't seen in awhile. We drank. We danced. We sang. We stayed up late. And we spoke with fancy accents and used our fingers as fake monocles (I do declare it was hilarious!). Congratulations to Adam & Kelly!

Then that brings us to Sunday. I woke up and that sneaky cold was still hanging around - and now it was angry that I'd been ignoring it, but with the weekend coming to a close I was no longer concerned with ignoring it. I said farewell to my friends, got to the airport, made my way through security, bought a large orange juice and, in somewhat of a cold-haze, I found a seat at my gate. Sitting next to me was a little boy in a Josh Cribbs jersey trying to charm a nearby stranger for candy. I, however, had no interest in candy, I had only visions of sleeping on the plane dancing in my head. Finally we were able to board. It was a small plane and a full flight, I watched as seats filled up all around me, little Cribbs walked on the plane and sat behind me, but the seat right next to me remained empty. Just as I thought I'd managed to find the row with the only open seat on the plane, a man in a pilot uniform walked through the door. He spoke with the flight attendant and she pointed toward the open seat next to me. He walked back, smiled, but just before he sat down the flight attendant told him he was allowed to sit in the cockpit if he'd like. He declined, stating that he was okay in the seat and was planning to fall asleep. As soon as he said that, I knew we'd get along wonderfully. I think I was asleep before the flight attendant finished telling us where the emergency exits were located, my cold had finally won. The next thing I remember is little Cribbs screaming and kicking at the back of my seat. Apparently the candy he'd acquired earlier was now kicking in. As my eyes opened, I realized I'd slept for most of the flight. I slowly picked my head up and looked to my right to find the pilot was also asleep with his head almost touching mine.

So that's the story of my weekend and how after all of the birthday-partying, wedding-celebrating and cold-ignoring, I finally ended it by sleeping on a plane, with a pilot.