I began collecting decorations way back when I first had a little apartment of my own as a 23 year old new mother. My own mother (who also loves Christmas like I do) had passed on a few special family decorations to me for my oldest son’s first Christmas, but I remember that during that first holiday season, we barely had enough ornaments to cover a small tree. But I was just thrilled to have our own Christmas tree in our own little home.

Fast forward twenty years and well, we now have PLENTY of ornaments for the 10 foot tree we have, and in fact I think I am going to do a second, smaller tree again this year for all my overflow ornaments.

For those who love Christmas as much as I do, I thought I’d share some of my favorite Christmas decorations that are now up in our house for the season, and tell you a bit about where they came from (some special, some just fun). I actually decided to break this blog post into two parts, so as not to make anyone’s head explode with all my decorating pix. You can find all of them over at my Babble blog.