Ornament Giveaway

Well, I got the ornaments off the Christmas tree yesterday, finally.  Today will involve numerous trips to the attic to lug up all the plastic storage bins and stack them neatly along the wall.  And while I'm up there, I'm sure I'll find a zillion things I should box up and take over to Goodwill.  Keeping up with my attic is a never-ending chore.  Somehow, no matter how often I try to organize it, the junk piles keep multiplying.  (My late mother-in-law used to use her basement as a storage place and spent so much time working in it that one of her friends once remarked, "I think you have a man down there!")

But when you live in one home for over twenty years and raise a lot of children in it, it's amazing the amount of junk you can accumulate.  And while I periodically go through my attic junk piles and do sweeping purges to get rid of all the no-longer-useful and/or out-of-date items, I must sheepishly admit there are still some 80's-era dresses with NFL-sized shoulder pads up in my attic that I can't seem to let go of just yet, lest they miraculously come back in style...not to mention nostalgia-inducing baby and toddler clothes that haven't served a useful purpose in two decades, but nevertheless fill an enormous Rubbermaid container....and pretty much every toy my boys ever owned, because when my grandchildren come to visit, I want to make sure Grammy's house has lots of toys in it.

What is my problem anyway?  (Actually, I think my problem is that I have a convenient walk-up attic--a ginormous attic!--that can be easily accessed by a door in one of the bedrooms.  My attic was the envy of my mother-in-law, who could only get to hers via pull-down steps that were precarious at best and nearly impossible to navigate once her knees began to go.)

Anyway, back to the subject of Christmas ornaments.  I counted them, for the first time ever, and I certainly do have a lot! I have every kind of ornament you can imagine, made of every kind of material.  There are wooden ones, resin ones, stuffed cloth ones, paper and cardboard ones, metal ones, and fragile ones made of blown-glass, crystal, porcelain, and ceramic. Some are sports-related, some are Irish-themed, many are religious, and some--the most precious ones of all--were hand-made by my boys in grade school.  I have soldiers made of clothespins and family photo ornaments made by gluing the pictures inside round metal juice can lids.  I have many Hallmark ornaments, including collections of Norman Rockwells and Madame Alexanders, and I also have collections of Holy Cross and Notre Dame yearly edition ornaments in brass; most of these collectibles are gifts from family and friends, and I cherish them all.  Each November when I bring my ornament storage containers down from the attic, I open them up and get so excited--because sometimes, in the course of the year, I'll forget what I have; and when I see some forgotten beauty again, I'm like a kid on Christmas morning.  "Hello you," I'll say as I unwrap the tissue paper and rediscover one of my babies.

So you get the idea that I love Christmas ornaments.

I suspected that my ornament count was getting really high, but this year as I put them away I tallied them up and finally figured out exactly how many I have.  So I decided to have a contest, wherein you guess what the number is.  The winner will be the person who comes the closest, and the prize will be a hand-painted Santa Clause ornament, which I cut out of wood with my scroll saw many moons ago and for some reason never finished.

I promise you it will look much better when it's done!  I'll post a picture of the finished product  ASAP.

You have until Sunday, Feb.10 to leave a comment on this post with your guess, and I'll announce the winner on Monday, Feb. 11.  (I learned from my first giveaway--a copy of my book--that I should probably give people longer than overnight to enter a contest!  Especially when I've got a Santa to make!)

Good luck!