I know people who use Christmas cards to decorate during the holidays. I’ve seen folks stick cards on doors or refrigerators, hang them on strings to make mobiles or simply display them on a mantel. But many Christmas cards are opened, enjoyed, perhaps displayed for a short while, and then tossed in the trash with the torn gift wrapping and empty boxes after the festivities have ended. But what if your Christmas card was also an ornament that could go on the tree?

Christmas card ornaments with photos are just some of the many innovative and cool Christmas cards available online these days. They’re great for far-away grandparents and family members, and while not every person on your card list will want to put your ornament card on their tree, they will all enjoy receiving a personalized unusual Christmas card.

Pear Tree Greetings is one place that offers Christmas card ornaments with photos. Printed on 100 lb. recycled card stock, these stylish greeting cards can be personalized with your own photo and message, as you can see from the examples shown below.

To learn more about any of these Christmas photo cards, click any image below to visit Pear Tree Greetings and be sure to use coupon code SANTA15 to save $15 off an order of $100 or more.

Wood Grain Greeting

Ornamental Display

Merry Stripes

Ornamental Display

Strung Ornament

Swirling and Stylish

Find more Christmas card ornaments with photo, unusual holiday cards and cool Christmas cards.

As Christmas approaches every year, children work extra hard to make sure they’re on Santa’s Nice List. The fear of finding coal in your stocking rather than great toys and gifts under the Christmas tree is enough to keep most kids on their best behavior. Hopefully, that behavior continues after the holidays, and one great way to both recognize good behavior and encourage it all year long is to make sure your kids know they’re on Santa’s Nice List.

Here are some ways to show your kids that their good behavior has paid off.

The easiest way to let your children know they’ve made it to Santa’s Nice List is to send a personalized letter from Santa Claus with a Nice List certificate enclosed. You can get Nice List certificates from most companies selling Santa letters, or you can save money by creating your own printable Santa letters and Santa’s Nice List certificate at home. Creating your own personalized letters from Santa Claus ensures that St. Nick will say exactly the right things. It also gives you control over when and how Santa’s letter arrives.

Another way to make sure your children know they’ve made it to Santa’s Nice List is to send a free Santa message video in which Santa shows who is on his Nice List. You can can create a free video from Santa at Portable North Pole.

You can also surprise your kids with their own personalized Santa’s Nice List Christmas tree ornaments from Zazzle. Santa loves to leave these special ornaments on Christmas morning when he delivers all the other gifts for good girls and boys.

Kids will love getting these extra goodies from Santa. They remind your kids that Santa always knows when they’ve been bad or good, so hopefully they’ll continue to be good, for goodness sake.

Decorating trees during what has become known as the Christmas season began in Germany during the early 1800‘s. Nuts coated with sugar, apples and other pieces of candied fruit hung among the evergreen branches were the first German Christmas ornaments. Ornaments cut from gingerbread dough and marzipan also became popular. Later eaten by the children, these expensive treats were out of reach for all but the wealthy.

By the mid 1800‘s the glass-blowers of Lauscha began to produce hand-blown glass ornaments to mimic the fruits and nuts the wealthy were hanging on their trees. Long known for the quality of their glassware (medicine bottles, barometers, marbles and eye glasses) the glass-blowers expanded the ornament business into a cottage industry with the men doing the actual blowing of the ornaments, the women doing the silvering of the insides (early in the industry with either lead or mercury, then later on with a mixture of sugar-water and silver nitrate) and the children painting the outside. Thus began the tradition of the beautiful glass ornaments that Germany became famous for.

Lovely glass spheres aren’t the only German Christmas ornaments that valued by collectors. Dresden began producing gaily painted, embossed paper ornaments. Decorations of pressed tin with brightly lithographed pictures were being produced in other parts of Germany and thin strips of metal called “angel hair” began to show up on trees around the country. This “angel hair” is what we now lovingly call “icicles”. Ornaments were also made out of wood, walnut shells, pewter and wax.

Queen Victoria’s Prince Albert (a native of Germany) introduced the glass ornaments to England and by the 1870‘s German Christmas ornaments were being exported to Great Britain. Ten years later, F.W. Woolworth (the American Five & Dime giant) discovered the lovely glass ornaments during a trip to Europe and began importing them to the United States.

Though the popularity of the ornaments declined during both WWI and WWII, Germany still imports some ornaments to the United States every year. German Christmas ornaments, especially the older ones are still valued by collectors. The most popular German Christmas ornament shapes are Santa and Mrs. Claus (or St. Nick), Mary and Joseph, rocking horses, soldiers, pinecones and, of course, the German Christmas Pickle.

Of the many contributions that the German culture has made to modern society, perhaps one of the most beautiful and enduring is that of the Christmas tree and decorations.

- Sherry Law

by Debora Dyess
When I was a kid (more years ago than I care to recount) my daddy always made sure we each had a personalized Christmas ornament every year. He used a fine liner paintbrush and model car paint to meticulously write our name and the year on a Christmas ball, along with some memorable thing that happened that year. ‘Me, too!’ my ball reads for the year I was two. My sixteenth year ornament reads ‘Off to England!’ They are treasured keepsakes.
Options for personalizing Christmas ornaments have come a long way, baby. While the hand-painted Christmas messages are still a wonderful way to individualize holiday heirlooms, there are so many more ways available today to create your own personalized photo ornament. Here are simple instructions to help you create a homemade photo ornament using Microsoft Word and some simple materials.

Materials:
- Clear glass Christmas ball ornament
- Overhead transparency sheet (office supply store)
- Digital camera
- Computer and printer

Directions:
Open a new document in Microsoft Word. Open the drawing toolbar (view – toolbars – drawing), select an oval and ‘draw’ it onto your document.
Right click inside the oval; select ‘format autoshape’. Select ‘color and lines’; choose ‘no fill’ as the color. Click on ‘size’, and type in both height and width to match the size printed on ornament box. (NOTE: Because the ornament is a circle, height and width will be the same. If only one number is listed on the box, it is both.)

After closing the ‘format autoshape’ option, copy and paste the circle to cover the document, creating as many as you need. Insert the picture(s) by going to ‘insert’. Select ‘picture’, ‘from file’, and browse until you find your pictures. Insert pictures in circle document, resizing as needed to fit the balls. You will lose whatever doesn’t fit into the circle, so resize carefully.

Print onto transparency paper (a copy shop can do this for you). Cut out circles. Roll individual photo-circle around a skewer and insert into opened Christmas ball. Make sure the bottom of the picture is at the bottom of the ball. Once the photo is inside, it will open and fill the Christmas ornament. You may add glitter or confetti for a fun look, or decorate the outside of the ball with paint pens. Make sure not to obstruct the photo.
Using formal portraits or candid shots will change the character of the personalized photo ornament, as will how you choose to decorate each ball. You may even wish to combine the ‘old school’ method of personalization with the new, adding a name, date and words or event to remember to the outside of the ornament with a careful hand.
These personalized photo ornaments are sure to saved and cherished for many years.