Written by Julie Kohl of Eggs and Herbs…where creativity meets the farm

I love everything about Christmas except for commercialism.  I’m not at all into the whole Black Friday thing and I’ve never really been into the “gimme, gimme” attitude that a lot of people have around Christmas.  I do love the magic and the surprise and I love getting gifts as much as the next person but my favorite part of Christmas has always been making things.  Whether cookies and cakes, scarves, toys, or ornaments I love making Christmas special.

2000 was the year that the meaning and importance of a handmade Christmas really rang true with me and it involved an empty toilet paper roll, two paper stars and glitter.

My husband Richie and I had been married for less than five months and were about to celebrate our first Christmas together.  We were both in college full time, neither of us was working and we were BROKE!  Living off “extra” loan money that had long since run out, Christmas looked to be a fairly bleak that season.

Sadly Christmas decorations are expensive and are not really budget worthy in a newly married college couples world.  We did splurge and buy a fresh tree that year but everything else had to be borrowed or made.  We borrowed lights and some old ornaments from Richie’s mother.  My sister bought us candles for our windows and we spent a whole Saturday making ornaments together.  We strung popcorn that we popped on the stove, we made cinnamon ornaments and ornaments out of found popsicle sticks and fabric.  It was fun and romantic and we still use most of the ornaments today.  We got everything hung on the tree and I stepped back only to realize we were missing something.  A TREE TOPPER!  There was no angel, no star, no pretty bauble for the top of the tree.  We had literally spent our last dime and could not purchase anything for the top of the tree.

We began to look around.  Surely we had something we could use. We scrounged around and came up with an empty toilet paper roll, two paper stars and some glitter.  Combined with some glue we were able to fashion a very crude star for the top of our tree.  I remember the sense of peace and joy and accomplishment that came over me when Richie placed that star on the top of the tree.

In the years that have followed we have travelled all over the world (Paris, Rome, Alaska, Hawaii, Mexico and all over the US) and collected beautiful Christmas ornaments to remember places we have been.  Still, over 90% of the ornaments on our tree are handmade.  But every year the ornament I most look forward to putting up is that crude little star.  It now lives on a smaller, table-top tree but it is so beautiful to me and it wouldn’t be Christmas without that little star!

Julie Kohl is an art teacher by day and loves to write mostly about food and life on the small farm owned by her and her husband on her blog Eggs and Herbs…where creativity meets the farm.  Julie is also the Farm Kitchen writer for The Renegade Farmer and is one of the four founding members of Arkansas Women Bloggers.

Handmade Holiday is the Arkansas Women Bloggers theme of the month.  We would love for you to share your Handmade Holiday story with our readers.  Please visit our Guest Post Guidelines page for information about how to submit a story to ARWB.