My Favorite Ornament

On the Tenth Day of Blogmas

So it’s obviously Christmas time, belles & beaus. I’m attempting Blogmas and have done pretty good so far. Friday and Saturday were spent messing with my precious Kitchenaid Stand Mixer and making gingerbread cookies. Thankfully I haven’t sat and devoured the whole tin because I have some type of control. Thank God for small things.

I thought today we would take a trip down Sentimental Lane and visit with my Christmas tree decorations. Now to sum up things, my mother and I have an extensive Christmas ornament collection – most of which cannot and will not fit on my six and a half feet tall tree. It’s a Wal*Mart tree! It’s not fluffy or large enough to actually fit all of them. One day I will own a big enough tree like that, but it will sadly be a few years down the road.

So we have a bunch of Christmas ornaments and I have to get really selective about what makes it on my tree when I put it up. But there is one ornament that will always have a very special place on my tree.

Let me take you back to about my sophomore or junior year in high school. We had a kitten that we discovered during one of my musical practices. Mom and I brought her home and she quickly became part of the family. Estella – Stella for short – was our pride and joy for quite a few months. She would stay with me until I fell asleep at night and then go curl up in bed with my mom. On weekends when Mom didn’t work, she would go up to my mom and paw the covers away from her face like “Get up! It’s time to be awake!” Stella was so integrated into our lives that she would actually go searching for me through the house in the afternoons if I didn’t come home – even going so far as to go upstairs in our house at the time to try and find me.

Well, sadly we lost Stella almost as soon as we got her. Before Christmas we had her fixed and it was right before school started back after Christmas break when we lost her. We don’t know what caused her to pass away but it was a really emotional issue for me because our long time family cat, Salem, – yes she was a pitch black cat – had been missing for a while. She wasn’t a house cat like Stella though.

But essentially the reason I’m telling you this story is because before she passed, Mom and I had gone to a Hallmark during a shopping trip and I happened upon the Mischievous Kitten series that they do. Every year the artist creates a kitten in a different situation. That year the kitten just happened to look like Stella and she was drinking Santa’s mug of milk that she’d turned over. It just made me think of her so we bought it.

When we lost her a couple weeks later, I made the decision to add Stella’s little name tag from her collar onto the handle for the mug. It’s truly one of my most prized possessions because it’s my little reminder of her. I can’t say that Katherine is better than her. Every cat I have ever owned has a special place in my heart. Stella was hilarious and loved to travel with us. She would chatter all around the backend of mom’s explorer when we took her places with us. She just loved everyone. So it’s really special to have that to remember her by.

Do you have any ornaments that have a special place in your heart?

I hope your weekend has been restful!

XOXO,

Trula Marie