LIA MAKING ORNAMENTS

LIA MAKING ORNAMENTS
Originally uploaded by Louise001

LIA MAKING ORNAMENTS

I just spent a couple of days babysitting, and Lia and I completed an ART project.
I remembered, how much my two children loved making bread dough ornaments for Christmas, sometimes called play dough ornaments.
We made them when we still lived in San Francisco, when I was still a stay at home mom and had more time, and energy to devote to ''projects.''
We cut them out with cookie cutters and painted them too. We made snowmen, angels, trees, stars and others. Some turned out very cute and I kept all of their personally hand made ornaments for about 40 years. They survived our move to South San Francisco, then Oakdale, then Modesto, and then my move to Arizona, and Oregon. I was very sad when I was packing in Oregon to move to Southern California, to discover they were crumbling from the dampness there. I had kept them very well protected all those years. I think they were one of the most difficult things to part with of my life.
Now, I have made them with my almost four year old granddaughter.
They brought back wonderful memories of when my little ones were small. Michelle was maybe six or seven and Marcus was two or three.
We had so much fun making these ornaments, the three of us together. It was a most memorable and fun family time.
Every year they would be excited to decorate the tree and especially to see ''their'' own hand made creations come out of the decoration box and unwrapped. They usually wanted to hang their own, and I can remember them laying on the floor around the decorated tree and discussing their decorations and the tree and possible ''dream presents.''
I always tried to make Christmas a huge occasion for us three, after I became a single parent. I was on a very limited salary for a few years and it was not easy! I tried to get a big tree every year though, and with their decorations along with a pretty good sized collection of angels and other cute ones I had accumulated over the years, it was always a pretty tree.

Uploaded by Louise001 on 14 Nov 10, 1.12PM EST.