Two ornaments that always make it on the tree are the ones I showed in last year's tree post (the "here" one above), the sons in Christmas-pageant attire. As I think I said then, younger son is not quite the little angel he was then, 
while older son still knows what to do with a stick in his hands. 
We do have the odd store-bought ornament on the tree, 
including some given to us by the husband's now-departed mother. 
Most of the ornaments are homemade, though some of those were gifts from an art teacher friend. 
Others were stitched by my stepmother. 
Others were made by the sons. 
And still others, I made the year we lived in the Netherlands and decorated a tree entirely with creatively handmade ornaments such as toilet paper tolls covered with electrical tape. 
Besides the Christmas Ape atop the tree, some stuffed animals always manage to work their way into the branches. 
There are always some oddities such as the tag I took off a gift one year and started hanging as an ornament. 
For the first time, this year a number of "shinies," things I find and save for no reason other than I found them and think them interesting, made it onto the tree. 
Finally, somewhere in the tree (you'll just have to take my word for it because I could not find it to photograph) is a set of keys that younger son found beside the road. The radio locking component is beat up to the point of suggesting the set was run over at least once. Why are they on the tree? Why not? They were sitting on a nearby shelf as we were hanging adornments, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.
