By Brittney Lee

I love Christmas trees. There is something magical about the twinkling lights and festive ornaments. Some of my favorite trees are the beautifully decorated ones that have coordinating ornaments. Each year I admire them in the department stores or at friend’s houses. However, I’ve never wanted to make my tree into a designer tree.  Instead, we have what I call a scrapbook tree.

Ever since I was a little girl, I remember adding a special ornament every year, and often the ornaments had special meaning for that particular year.  I’ve carried that tradition into my adulthood with my own family.  Our tree is a sort of scrapbook with ornaments marking the events of our family- both big and small. Our tree is like looking at a family photo album.

There are memories hanging on the branches – memories from friends, milestones, hobbies, vacations. Sure, we have some velvet bows and sparkly glass bulbs…but most of our decorations are sentimental.

We mark our lives with ornaments for our Christmas tree. 

Our memory book tree started with our very first family ornament – an engagement ornament.

Then we had a custom ornament made to commemorate our wedding and wedding party.

We have special ornaments from our honeymoon in Maui; an ornament given to us by our realtor for our first Christmas in our home; an ornament for our dog, Mikey; and a carved nativity from a vacation to Mexico.

We have ornaments that mark our hobbies and interests, including my husband’s RC car and my blogging ornament.

I try to add at least one special ornament each year. This year we have two special ornaments – one commemorating our vacation to Lake Fort Smith where we kayaked together for the first time, and the other is a police officer as my husband took a job with the police department this year.

To some, my tree might look shabby chic and disordered. But to me, it’s a walk down memory lane that I get to go down when I put up the tree, when I watch the lights twinkle, and when I take it down.  I can’t wait to have children some day and tell them about every special ornament on our tree.  Someday we may have to have TWO trees to hold all the special ornaments.  But either way, I wouldn’t trade these sentimental ornaments for anything.

Brittney is on a mission to be better every day. She blogs her journey at Razorback Britt, where she writes about fitness, faith, cooking, fashion, weekend adventures, and more. She has done some truly remarkable things – she built a house and only got into two fights with her husband, and she once won an electric slide contest.