Years ago, I lived alone in my apartment in the DC area, far from my estranged family, and hated how lonely the holidays were, especially putting up the tree. I started having tree trimming parties every year. I made ornaments to give to guests and requested guests to bring an ornament of their choosing, homemade was preferred, but all were accepted. I did this for about 10-15 years. I stopped because I don't have room for a big enough tree! I have some lovely ornaments with stories attached.

After moving in with my honey, we started collecting ornaments that we (ok...just me) found at flea markets and thrift stores around town. I love the look of older ornaments, and prefer their toned down colors and rough edges, it helps to blend the tree in with the rest of our home, which is furnished by the same standards. Though they don't have a unique story, each one is new and exciting to us. I appreciate how long such delicate items have survived and almost feel that we were destined to find them. That they made it all those years just to be scooped up and loved by us.

My mother actually started my collection for me. I served in the military for four years overseas. After Christmas my mother would go shopping for discounted Christmas decorations, buying a coulple at a time. When I came home I had a nice little collection started for me. Sure there were couple that didn't make it past the first year, but I am slowly adding to the collection each year. Actually almost all of my Christmas decorations came from my mother. I have Christmas china for 12. When am I ever going to have 12 people that can fit in my apartment around Christmas?

My parents bought me an ornament every year (and still do!) since I was born. It usually was related to something that happened that year (a dog ornament the year I got my dog, an ornament from my university when I graduated...). Along with those and others that people gave me along the way, I have enough ornaments to decorate my little x-mas tree in my apartment now. It is a special collection and a tradition I'm sure I'll do for my kids when I have them!

Not as romantic or sentimental, but many of m ornaments were bought AFTER Christmas and squirreled away for the next year. A few years ago, during my first Christmas after a divorce I had a tree trimming party and many of my friends bought me ornaments to replace the ones that had become sentimental in that painful kind of way. While it wasn't planned every one who brought an ornament told me why they had picked that ornament for me...I am reminded of those stories every year when I trim the tree.

Every year since I was born, my parents have given me and my brothers each an ornament- always something symbolic of either something we love, somewhere we've been, or our personalities. When I got married, I got to take all of mine with me and continue the tradition on our own tree. Putting up the tree and hanging ornaments is probably my favorite part of the season.

I began my ornament collecting through estate sales years ago, picking up boxes of random ornaments for a couple of bucks or so, as these were not the really good ones, but it was what my budget could handle at the time and some of them had to be tossed immediately the rest, I have kept and use every year, others are boxes of old Shiny Brite ornaments I found at estate sales as well.

I have some stuff my Mom has given me over the years, some of them were from their tree, some she's found and given me, including one retired Santa ornament from Christopher Radko a few years back. I specialize in glass ornaments from Germany etc, especially vintage ones but new ones that mimic older styles. I once found a box of Bradford ornaments that looked like something sold back in the 50's or 60's, brand new at Target in I think 2005 and then never saw them again as they'd shuttered their doors in I think 2007. I'd love to get the reproduction Shiny Brite ornaments from Christopher Radko and they are not terribly expensive either for a box.

I also have been known to use old vintage light sets in good condition although right now, the lights on my tree are not terribly old (24 years old) that I bought new in '85 on my tree but the light set outside are older, from the 70's I think with a mixture of vintage and newer bulbs.

I still collect and when I have gone to estate sales, I have always perused the Christmas stuff left at these sales and have not found anything of interest, hope to find some cool stuff in the coming year.

My family used to do an Ornament Exchange (before my great-grandma passed) on Christmas Eve. Everybody brought a homemade ornament and we drew numbers to see who got what. Now when I decorate the tree each ornament is a reminder of the person who made it. Like the carved reindeer from Uncle Jeff, the nut-mouse from Grandma, and the crudely painted bauble my cousin made when she was 3.

We got married right after Christmas, so that year everyone gave us ornaments as Christmas gifts. That gave us a good start. Since then, we've only bought ornaments that we thought were really interesting, like dinosaurs, or a parachuting alien.

My mom still has all the felt ornaments that she bought for us at craft fairs when we were growing up. They were chosen to represent our interests in each year, so I have an ice skater, a softball player, a girl scout, etc. and my brothers have train engineers, firefighters and baseball players.

My grandmother gives me an ornament for christmas every year since I was a child. I love putting all the years up on the tree and look forward to this years.

My ornament collection started as an act of teenage rebellion. Our Christmas tree was always decorated with red glass balls and gold garland and a few handmade ornaments made by us kids throughout the years at school, scouts, etc. My mom still decorates her tree this way - snore. I started to like the trees decorated with all different ornaments and one Christmas mentioned this to my Grandmother and she made me some hand beaded ornaments. Not to be outdone, the following year my mother gave me some ornaments that she hand painted. From then out out I'd get an ornament or two from both until I had a set of my own when I was on my own. When I got together with my husband he suggested that we start our own collection. I've made some, we've purchased some as a vacation souvenirs, when we bought our condo, etc., because it was so cheeseball odd that we had to have it, and some just because I like them. I love that every ornament on my tree has a story and that I can switch them up and make my tree look different from year to year.

My husband and I have exchanged ornaments every Christmas since we started dating. We had moved in together by the time our first Christmas together rolled around, and neither of us had any ornaments, so I requested that he give me one for Christmas, and I did the same. It has become tradition. I choose a favorite photo of us from the year and put it in an ornament frame; he gives me cute kitty cats.

We also have several we've collected when travelling. And I have a small collection of My Little Pony ornaments. The rest are hand-me downs and gifts from friends and family.

I got my base of ornaments in the after Christmas decoration sales last year... A ton of cute, shatterproof (too many small nieces and nephews around at Christmas to risk destroying the nice ornaments for now).

I'm also supplementing with ornaments that have been given to me or that I've collected while traveling.

My next goal is to get my hands on some of my childhood ornaments since my parents no longer do a big tree.

Most of my ornaments (about 75%) I made. I have some that are counted cross stitch that I made in junior high, some handpainted ceramic gingerbread men, some handpainted wooden toys--that sort of thing. I also have a couple that were from when I grew up. I remember being 6 when my mom bought them. Those are my favorites.

I make all of my ornaments. Mainly they're pictures I cut out of magazines and adorn with glitter glue. They're cheap and trashy and I like them that way. Plus, they pack nice and flat in a box. My favorite is a giant picture of french fries with ketchup.

We buy ornaments on trips and then also buy an ornament for each year that would be a reminder of something that happened. I love the ones we've picked up on trips and over the years friends and relatives have started bringing us back ornaments from their trips as well. I love the random mix of ornaments and the memories that go with them. And I love that my souvenirs get full display once a year without cluttering up the house the remaining 11 months.

To everyone who received one each year from their parents -how awesome! I think that's a great idea and probably one i'll stow away for when I start a family.

Year one with (now)hubby, I purchased white lights, red wooden beads, and a few rolls of ribbon (red, green, and gold). I strung the lights and ribbons, and then tied bows, about 3" big, on the end of most of the branches. No ornaments. After Christmas I bought a bunch of red and gold balls of different sizes and finishes.

Year two, same as above, but with the balls.

Year three, the white lights, the red beads, and then about $30 of straw Ikea ornaments and a star.

Year four, lights, beads, Ikea ornaments, but I added some of the balls back in. My aunt also gave me a set of traditional German ornaments.

Years five-seven, I've been mixing and matching. We've accumulated ornaments throughout the seven Christmases we've been together, so each year the tree gets less planned and more ecclectic. By the time we have kids, we'll probably have boxes of ornaments that don't even make it up. I don't know if year eight (this year) will see a tree though, as we've just moved and the room that we would put a tree in currently has all the boxes that we've yet to unpack.

My parents have been collecting Hallmark ornaments since before I was born (mostly the Crayola and Frosty Friends along with ones they bought in Holland, one they had painted to look like me sleeping in a crib, ornaments I made in school, etc). It got to the point that there were so many ornaments we couldn't put them all on the tree so my mom decided to try a Victorian theme that year with burgundy and gold balls, garland and velvet bows. I hated that tree and boycotted it by never turning on the lights.

The first year I was on my own I asked to take some of the ornaments with me, but my mom threw a fit, so I wound up doing a blue and silver snowflake-themed tree. Somehow it wasn't so offensive since I didn't have any ornaments of my own.

The first year my husband and I were together we used my snowflake ornaments, bead garland, lights and a few ornaments he made as a kid.

During the after Christmas sales at Target we bought a little "Letter to Santa" tube ornament that we write a short letter to our one-year-later selves. That way, when we unpack the ornaments the following year there's a little note to ourselves about what happened the year before. It's been a fun little tradition that I hope to continue when we have kids. We look forward to opening that little ornament every year!

I too was given ornaments every year by my mother, but heaven forfend I remove them from the house -- she takes her Christmas tree very seriously. The first year I was married, we bought a little table-topper tree and a handful of ornaments from Target (including a pack of teeny silver balls) and from Cost Plus, my absolute favorite source for Christmas ornaments, and added to it the star and other ornaments I'd bought the previous December working at an upscale Christmas boutique (still my favorite job of all time, hands-down). Since then we've added a few every year, mostly from the same sources but also from the internet and fair trade stores, and tried to stay with wooden, felted, straw, or otherwise handmade looking ornaments, in a red/white/green Scandinavian-ish theme. (I guess taking the tree seriously is genetic!)

The year I was born my mom started buying ornaments the reflected something I loved that year. She always bought 2 similar ornaments, and when we would decorate the tree we would pick a pair and we would each hang one. The reason she bought 2 was so that when I moved out I could take one from each set and have my own little collection of ornaments for my own tree. I still love opening the familiar ornaments from my childhood, and I have continued the tradition with my 2 boys as well.

When my siblings and I were kids, we each had ownership of our own box of ornaments. We added to the collections each year with ornaments we made or were given, and when we got married, we could take our box with us. So my husband and I have all mix-and-match ornaments on our tree! Not a single red glass ball in sight. ;)

My husband and I started an ornament collection the very first Christmas we were together. We buy two matching ornaments every year. Some are bought at a department store, such as Smith and Hawken, which is now gone, sadly, or on road trips, such as the starfish ornaments we bought this summer while vacationing in Maine. It's a beautiful way to mark how long we have been together.