Ugly Ornament Party - 2015

Oh, how we love ugly ornaments! Oh, how difficult it is (much more than you might think) to find a real contender! Sure, the stores are full of normal ugly, but the truly awful are very rare. I would know, because I look for them all year. You'd think garage sales would be full of them. But no.

Updated to add a link to this related Cracked article. I don't care what anyone says: I sort of like #3.



Here's what I brought to the table: Christmas Herpes. So named because, as we know, "Glitter is the herpes of the crafting world." I trashpicked it, naturally, so no backstory on why anyone would glue a bunch of pine cones together and then cover it in holographic glitter. What the photo doesn't show is how heavy this monstrosity is. Truly a fail. Extra points for also, again, failing to be ugly enough to garner very many votes. I'll never win my own party, sniff sniff.

For the others, let's go in reverse order. First, some bad honorable mentions: Little Drummer Boy and Leder-HORSE-n (obviously pandering to the German unicorn vote, that one).



We can all agree, no?, that they are unfortunate. But not bad enough, sorry. 

Next, the one I voted for. I love it! It's "A Very Troll-y Christmas." I believe there's some sort of troll movie coming out, so points for relevance. Also, it's a nice riff on the Easter Egg craft thing, as it's the same shape as those traditional sugary Easter delights. It only lost by a vote or two. 



And lastly, the winner, which is worse in person than what you see here, aptly named "Orange You Glad This isn't Your Ornament?" It's half a painted coconut with weird seed pods stuck on it. Except the one on top apparently wasn't glued enough, as it didn't make it to my house.



And there you have it. Another ugly ornament party in the record books. Hope you enjoyed this installment of "oh, yeah, I have a blog, oops, forgot."


We're just going to move forward and ignore the fact that this update is super late, kthanksbye.

Ugly ornament party - updates

As previously discussed, we like to throw the occasional ugly ornament party. We called the party “annual” for a long time, but at some point we realized that we were horrible filthy liars. It’s not annual if you skip years with a frightening degree of regularly. Anyway. Had one in 2011. Had one again this past month.

The 2011 winner was entitled “With the Teeth” and was presented into competition by the fabulous, marvelous Josh and Jean-Marie. It’s awful, and completely deserved to win.

As usual, whatever it was that I entered was a boring type of bad. Sigh. It’s hard finding good contenders. I keep an eye out at garage sales and rummage sales all year, but there’s so much that’s just a middling amount of ugly.

 

It was Santabird, back in the day, that forced us to make two categories. Who can compete with a twisted mind like that? But again, coming up with creative ugly is harder than it appears. Trust me, I've tried.

Sandi brought "Scary Poppins" to our house, and won the homemade/altered prize. She bought it at a craft fair. You probably can’t tell from this photo, but it’s mostly made out of beads and safety pins. She is holding an umbrella. Again, please note that a good title can take your ornament to the next level of awful.

And in the store-bought category this year, our first two-peat! Josh and Jean-Marie returned with "Little Red," the runaway winner. Bought at the same antique store as their last winner. They haven’t said where this store is, but I’m going to have to see if I can figure it out.

Because that place is clearly a goldmine of hideousness.

Ugly Christmas Ornament Party: A Retrospective

A long time ago, we used to be fun. That was before we had kids. Back in those idyllic days, we would host amusing parties. I would say the most popular themed party we had was the Ugly Christmas Ornament Party. Which was a nice break from all the serious holiday parties. It started out fairly casual and became pretty competitive by the end, with rules and stuff. Actually, a lot of my parties seem to have rules. It's because I'm German. I can't help it.

The rules were:

• One entry per person.
• Enter into one of the categories: store-bought or homemade/altered.
• One vote per person. Yadda yadda, can't quite remember all the voting rules for having two categories.
• You must be willing to give up your entry. Everyone will go home with a different ornament.
• The winning ornament stays with us.

Luckily we are organized (snort!) and have all the winners still carefully stored all together in a box. I present them to you for your enjoyment.

1998 Red D*ldo -- Joanne Harrison

1999 Paschke -- Perrigo family

2000 Santabird -- Darin and Olga

2001 It Just Screams Christmas -- N

2002 Holiday Time in Afghanistan -- Tish

2003 Cowpie Snowman -- Kris Ward

And this little bonus item that was robbed of winning. I think John brought it the first year we had the party. His grandma made it or something. I'm pretty sure I voted for it. It's top-notch.

And this. This monstrosity.

This started it all. N and I found it in an antique store in Hebron, IL. It was $7. I took off the little plaques N made with the winners' names on them. And ain't she a beaut.