Happy Holidays from flipflopcaravan!

Last year on Christmas I was gawking at the magnificence of Niagara Falls with my dog Dixon. It was a quiet holiday away that I had all to myself.

This year I spent Christmas surrounded by 20(ish) of my nearest and dearest paternal family members – the O’Brien clan!

Like most people, the holidays are synonymous with family for me. But Christmas also always reminds of jet setting! As luck would have it, my family is one that digs traveling, so often times the two fuse together quite nicely.

When I travel, I rarely bring home anything large. Instead, I tend to snag small little trinkets that inevitably end up as ornaments on my baby tabletop Christmas tree in DC. So each year, when I pull out my little box of holiday decorations, it’s like a saunter down Travel Memory Lane.

Here are some of my favorites:

My Great Grandparents picked this up in Hong Kong in the 1970’s.

One of several inch-long idols I brought home from Puno, Peru.

A wee Kiwi from New Zealand.

 Signs of the Zodiac from Taiwan

While in Slovakia, I was taken with this delicate handmade bell.

A wooded tree adorned with kangaroos, koalas and wombats could only be from visiting the Aussie fam in Melbourne!

After riding an elephant in Thailand, my parents gave me this little guy.

Teeny tiny rhino from a market in Perm, Russia (as if they have rhino’s in Russia?).

My sister gave me this dude 10 years ago after a trip to the Witch Markets in La Paz, Bolivia…5 years later, I got there myself.

 I fell in love with this beautiful embroidery in Seoul, South Korea

A vintage snowman from my Grandparents collection in San Diego, California

Go Ducks! My tree wouldn’t be complete without a nod to my Alma Mater in Eugene, Oregon.

Hope you all had a fabulous holiday, wherever in the world you might be!