Olaf & Elsa's Snowflake

When Mr Click and I celebrated our first Christmas together, around six weeks after we got engaged, I suggested making something a tradition which is equal parts one of my favourite things about Christmas and also the bane of my life at times.

As Christmas is hands down my favourite time of year, I thought it would be romantic to exchange a Christmas tree ornament each year. The idea is that each year you get a significant ornament and years in the future you can look at your tree and know that each ornament symbolises a year together and all those happy memories.

When we got married on Christmas Eve it was logical to make these tree ornaments our anniversary gifts to one another. I complicated things slightly by making them correspond to whatever the traditional anniversary gift would be for that year. This year, seven years, is wool. As you can imagine, I'm finding this one rather easier than leather and brass.

I always knew this was a tradition I wanted to continue when we started a family.

Last year, despite losing them at the end of November, we added a pair of snowflakes to the tree for Olaf and Elsa. Since they were our frozen embryos I always associated them with snowflakes and so after we lost them snowflakes came to represent them. We got a pair of blue and white ceramic snowflakes; one each.

This year I wasn't sure whether or not it would be 'right' to put an ornament on our tree for them. I've actually been swinging back and forth on this since the summer. I guess I was hesitant in case people viewed it as morbid, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew that getting Olaf and Elsa an ornament for our tree was the right thing to do. They were with us for such a short time, but that had such a massive impact on our lives that it seems fitting to remember them in some little way, especially at my favourite time of year when I hoped to be introducing them to the magic of Christmas.

With that decided I knew I needed to find them the perfect ornament.

When I was looking for their decorations last year, I knew I had the right ones as soon as I found them on Etsy. This year, and all years from now on, they're going to share, so I knew I was only looking for one.

Last Saturday my perfect day had turned into a not-so-perfect day (thanks to a suspicious puddle) so I made myself feel better and pulling up snowflake ornaments on Etsy. This has been an on and off pastime for me most of this year.

And I found it.

As soon as I saw it I knew.

The ornaments we got last year are in white and blue, so this looked perfect. It looks like it's made of actual ice crystals. When I unwrapped it and held it in my hand I was surprised at how warm the crushed glass felt when I was expecting it to feel so cold.

And it's one of a kind. Which prompted a bit of a panic when I saw it on Saturday because what if someone else bought it before I had a chance to. Luckily Mr Click is sensible and suggested that I just go ahead and order it then and there if I was so sure it was the one.

It came from meltedglassbysteph on Etsy and I'd highly recommend her products, based on this transaction. I panic ordered it on Saturday night and by Wednesday it had been received. See that box above? It was in there with plenty of cushioning to keep it safe (I'm actually keeping the box to store it in when we take down the tree next year)

Hopefully by next year we'll have another little member of the Click family to get a decoration for, but I have a feeling Olaf and Elsa will still get an ornament too, and it may very well come from the same Etsy shop.