The Home Guru Wishes You the Best Intentions for Home-Made Holiday Decorations

When my wife and I first married in late fall more years ago than I care to remember, our first big crafts project was to make our own Christmas tree ornaments.

A former roommate of mine who was in the decorating field had taught me a wonderful technique for making our own Christmas balls, starting with a styrofoam ball, many straight pins, ribbons, beads, feather plumes, and any old costume jewelry one could wrestle from family or friends.

Before the days of A.C. Moore and Michael's, the place to get the wildest stuff for ornamental projects (and I presume it still is) was in the hat district of Manhattan, west of Fifth Avenue on 38th Street. On my way home from work each day, I'd pass through and go wild, bringing the most delightful ribbons and decorations home.

Then, immediately following dinner, we would sit in the living room, spread out my hat district finds on our large coffee table and get to work.

My wife and I came up with the idea of each making one elaborate tree ornament every year throughout our marriage.  But we got so much into our new hobby that it became an obsession. The balls became more and more elaborate as we developed our skills, and many were themed with their own names.

There was the Grace Kelly ball with pale blue and white ribbons and pearls; the Swan Lake ball with white ribbons, white feathers and crystals, the "Our Baby" ball with pink ribbon ruching (Is anyone surprised that a guy knows what ruching is?); the Can-Can Girl ball with black and red ribbons, beads and a black feather plume on top, and our real piece de resistance, a large Faberge ball with semi-precious gems all over it.

The tips of our thumbs had developed calluses from pushing in the pins until we got smart and used thimbles to aid our obsession. 

We decided it would be safer to buy a very large artificial tree so that there would be no threat of staining the balls from tree sap, and we kept producing our little and not so little gems until we ran out of space on the tree. We were Christmas ball addicted.

During that first holiday season, we magnanimously allowed our guests to select one of our creations for their own trees, and still the tree seemed overladen with sparkly stones and beads.

The bottom line, however, is that we must have OD'd on our first year's attempt because we haven't made a single ball since that first year. Nor did we need to. 

As we have gotten older, our tree has become smaller over the years, and our daughter who was predated by that pink ribbon ball in her honor, is now the recipient, one by one, of our early Christmas decorating binge.

I guess that's the kind of stuff newly-married couples do.

Bill Primavera is a realtor who writes as The Home Guru about home-related interests. For questions or comments, he can be reached at 914-522-2076.