I wanted to bring you a blog post full of wonderful decor that I had designed for our home. I kept hoping I would get something yummy created but quite frankly I am seriously running out of time. I still have a LOT to do. I did decide to share with you some of the things that are the most important to us each Christmas. 25 years ago Evan and I had our very first Christmas together. We were babies, I was 20 (almost 21) and he was 22. That year we each made an ornament for our sad little tree. We used whatever elements we had in the house to design our little pieces. Evan created a Santa face made out of cardboard, ballpoint pen, white out, and red sharpie. I made a very pitiful little angel in an attempt to copy the angel from the Heider Christmas tree. My little angel had tin foil wings and I sewed small pearl beads on her fabric dress. I used makeup and fingernail polish to make her face. 25 years later those ornaments are our absolute favorites on the tree.

My sweet baby Grace’s ornament always moves me to tears. In addition to completely loving our baby girl, I love the word, I love the meaning, I love just saying Graces’ name. I love that Grace is here and knowing that a miracle was behind her arrival.

My “believe” ornament was given to me from my good friend Cara Berger. Many years ago Cara was one of my brides. She is now an event planner and a mother of 2 and a wonderful friend. Cara gave me the ornament after our family had suffered two miscarriages. She begged me to believe in our family, in miracles, and that more children would come our way. We have had 3 more children since we first started hanging that ornament. Believing works.

I love the ornaments that have the faces of my babies on them and I love our little white crosses. One of the members from our church made the ornament by casting the old iron fence that was around our historic church. Each child has a cross from the church that they were baptized in.

Each ornament on the tree has significant meaning to us. We have the last ornaments from Grammy and Pop and they mean the world to us, ornaments from Aunt Carla, gifts from family and friends. Our tree is a beautiful arrangement of history, family, love and Grace.

My absolute favorite thing to set up each year is our pictures with Santa. I have pictures with the same Santa for 15 years. Each year Santa has a new Chapple baby in the picture and it’s so much fun to see the progression of our family in those pictures. Our Santa passed away two years ago, so these photographs mean the world to me.  My biggest wish is that his family knows how much joy he gave to so many people in our community. I want them to know that those images are my greatest treasure.

This all proves to me that Christmas is about the memories you make with family and friends. I hope everyone has a merry Christmas, and a wonderful New Year. I know my brides and grooms will be so happy to celebrate their first married Christmas together. I hope they create some amazing memories this year!!

I am going to take the next few days off to spend time with my family and to do a few Santa tricks.  I will post if I feel inspired or find the time. Merry Christmas to you all!!