Over the past ten years of my relationship we have developed a few traditions, one of my favorites being that every time we go on a trip we pick up a Christmas ornament! The reason why this is a favorite of mine is that it adds even more sentimentality to our tree, but also it sparks up beautiful memories of all of our trips together! We are missing two ornaments from our first few trips together in Virginia Beach and Myrtle Beach. Which just means we will have to return there some day, something I am very much looking forward to, because we have such amazing memories there.
The first ornaments I ever bought for our tree weren’t actually from a trip, I picked them up in Bryant Park as part of a Christmas gift for Joe, one of them is a penguin and the other an orca. An ornament of each of favorite animals. Now, you may wonder why I decided to include these since they aren’t from a trip, and that is because they were the first Christmas decorations I ever bought for us, they cost me a pretty penny, and they started me on my sentimental ornament journey!
The first ornament we picked up during travel was a red Hershey’s kiss from my birthday trip to Lancaster, PA. I can remember the moment we picked it out in the store, I knew that it was the perfect ornament for our tree since Hershey’s kisses were a Christmas staple for both of us growing up! Following that I actually made an ornament of Shutterfly for our snow trip to Shawnee Mountain, PA. This is the only ornament that I made out of the bunch because I wanted to have the memory picking it out, but I thought since it was for an overnight trip it was ok to cheat this one time.
Our next trip was to San Juan, PR., now this was not an easy one to find because I didn’t want something that just had San Juan printed on it, that I could have gotten anywhere, and it was July! So, we walked around Old San Juan for days looking, its a beautiful city so trust me we didn’t mind the hunt! Then one day we walked into an art shop and found these hand made ornaments, they were different from anything I had seen or had ever owned and had the city beautifully painted on them. So, we picked one out and finished our search. We were lucky one one of our other trips we had to settle for a less unique piece.
The next trip was California, where we actually ended up with two ornaments! The first one we picked up was a pulled glass turtle on Catalina Island, this wasn’t a typical choice of ornament for me but we had such a great time there even though it was only for a few hours, I felt like I had to get something to bring out those memories. But, I needed something to reflect back on the trip as a whole, I looked up a Christmas store by the hotel, but they were seasonal and didn’t have anything in mid September. So, I thought I was going to have to go home with just my turtle. Until I walked into the Starbucks located next to the lobby and saw these hand painted baubles they were selling from a local artist and picked one up with a beautiful humming bird one it.
Then there was Stockbridge. Mass. we went last year for our Christmas trip! you can check out the vlogmas from the trip if you’d like on my channel. I wasn’t sure what to get on this one. they had many hand painted ornaments and artisanal shops, but since the town is famous for being the inspiration behind many of Norman Rockwell’s famous works, I decided to go with something that celebrated his legacy. So, we searched the town and right before we left I stumbled on a small framed print of one of his paintings of the town. It was the perfect choice, and the first time I was able to place our newest ornament on the tree as soon as we arrived home, which just added to the memories.
We are getting close to the end of the list now with this past summer’s trip to Punta Cana, DR. This one has a shorter story since we didn’t have quite as much area to explore, we stayed in an all inclusive resort, and just relaxed for days, which left us mainly with the shops they had there. So, I ended up with one of those mass produced ones, but I mad sure to get the prettiest mass produced one we could find, which was a clear glass with sand and seashells inside it and Punta Cana printed on the front.
Leading to our final and newest additions, we just went on a holiday trip to Orlando, Fl. and I just had to pick up two ornaments on this trip! One for the Harry Potter section of our trip and one for the Disney part! The Harry Potter one was easy I decided on it almost instantly, Its a red bauble that has the Wizarding World of Harry Potter printed on the front in gold and is topped by a gold lion with Gryffindor written beneath his paws. The Disney one was harder, I wanted something Beauty and The Beast but I couldn’t find one that I loved, I liked a few but I just couldn’t visualize how they would work with our tree. So, I decided I would pick something at Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, because it would likely be both Christmasy and Disney, this is when I found one of Mickey and Minnie dressed in Santa outfits kissing, and I thought it was perfect, it had Christmas, Disney, and was a loving image to reflect the feeling of our perfect trip!
So, there is our beautiful magical tree of memories! I hope you enjoyed this stroll down memory lane with me! Thanks for reading and I wish you a joyous holiday!