The Dear Homelies

P and I put up our tree today and had our usual nostalgic romp through the ornaments.  I selected the five homeliest of the ornaments to feature in today's blog post.  These are ancient ornaments, but they are always hung on our tree.  Sometimes we have to punch new holes for the hangers because the insertion places are getting more and more fragile.  The hanger on one of these has migrated along the side several times.  But here they are:  on the left, dating from 1978, a bell painted by two-year-old Erik when he was a student at the ECDC at St. Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana. This clever thing is nothing but a little paper cup with a pipe cleaner poked through the bottom.  Serviceable all these years.

Beside the bell is another bell, this one fabricated by David in 1975 when he was at McDonough #15 in  New Orleans.  It's made of magenta felt with some lace glued along the bottom and two seashells and three beads glued above the lace.  This is the last surviving of these, which once numbered at least three.

On the right is reindeer, probably a Rudolph, made of three ancient-history wooden clothespins and a few black felt dots glued on along with the red yard ball nose.  In 1981 Erik was 5 and still at the ECDC in kindergarten.  He colored the reindeer's head with a few strokes of brown crayon.

Michael's handprint ornament is the oldest of all:  he did it when he was in pre-school at St. Lawrence the Martyr in the outskirts of New Orleans, around 1970.  There were originally two of these, one for each hand I guess, but the only survivor is this right hand.  He really had big hands!

And on the right is the last remaining ojo dos dios (God's Eye, probably spelled wrong) that I believe came from around 1971, made by Michael and me at home.  I had learned how to make these from a teacher at the school where I was teaching, and I remember teaching him how to do them.