Today’s post will be all about my Christmas bracelet! I really enjoy these types of posts because I like sharing how my Pandora Christmas bracelet has evolved. I started this way back in 2015 (I can’t believe it’s been three years since that post!) and I’ve updated it ever since. Let’s take a look at what my bracelet looked like in 2015:

As you can see, it was a modest beginning. I once was telling a fellow Pandora collector that I wished I could make myself a Christmas bracelet but that I probably didn’t have enough Christmas charms, she laughed at me and said I’m sure you do. Wouldn’t you know it but she was right LOL. I thought because I had only purchased the Black Friday charms and a couple of Christmas charms here and there so I assumed I didn’t have enough but she was right, this was my first Christmas themed bracelet with only 10 charms, if you look closely enough you’ll see it’s off balance. I’m pretty sure I re-purposed the star dangle too, it was supposed to go on my first two tone star bracelet but then replaced it with the blue one.

Now we come to my 2016 Christmas bracelet:

What a difference three charms make! I had added the Gingerbread man and the Pine Cone (probably because they were going to get retired), and the 2016 Black Friday Poinsettia charm. It also looks like I must’ve purchased the 2015 BF charm after I had posted about this bracelet because I see it for 2016 but not for 2015. I also took off the Angel of Hope and the two tone Mistletoe, the Angel of Hope went onto my random/meaningful bracelet, and the Mistletoe went onto my two tone green bracelet. I think 2016 was the year my bracelet grew a lot!

And now we come to 2017:

In 2017 it seems like I also went a little crazy and started to add even more charms to my Christmas bracelet. I’m going to assume it was because charms were getting retired, that is usually the reason that impulses me to buy Christmas charms or charms I plan on adding to my Christmas bracelet. I feel weird buying Christmas charms in the middle of the year, so if I did it was most likely for that reason. Here we see that I added the Candy Cane, the Pandora Shopping Bag, the Winter Mittens, the Angel of Love and the 2017 Rockettes charm. Everything else was going to get retired, but I think the Angel of Love is still available, I bought that one to substitute the Angel of Hope that I repurposed.

At this point I considered my Christmas bracelet complete but unfortunately the 2017 Rockettes charm threw off my balance, and I also realized that I had room for only one more charm in the future and that was it, so I decided to split up my charms:

Above you’ll see all of the BF charms, and below you’ll see the regular Christmas charms. I decided to put my BF charms on the then new Pandora open bangle, and my regular charms back on their traditional snake chain bracelet:

This now freed up a whole lot of room! Unfortunately both bracelets were not balanced or symmetrical but that was ok, as it helps me work on my patience LOL. This forces me to have to wait to add more charms!

And now we come to 2018:

Since I had so  much room now I decided to include my green muranos to add some color, although I highly doubt that they will be a permanent fixture on this bracelet. Same goes for the ruby Eternity spacers,they again are just place holder as I have some room in between the charms. Perhaps I will find other spacers that I think are more appropriate to be permanent.

So once again, my bracelet is symetrical, but as always I have to throw a monkey wrench in it because I found a couple of charms I’ve been wanting and decided to add them to my collection. Also if you look carefully you’ll see the addition of the 2018 Rockettes charm on the open bangle, finally making that bracelet symmetrical as well.

So a couple of days before I started working on this post, I held a poll on my Facebook page asking you if you would like to know the meanings behind each of my Christmas charms, and even though only 10 of you voted, the vote was for yes on the meaning of the charms, so if you don’t care to know you can skip this part.

So we’ll start from left to right: the Apple of my Eye charm, this two tone charm represents a special cider/punch that my mom ALWAYS makes every Christmas, it’s not Christmas if this punch isn’t made and one although it contains a ton of ingredients (cinnamon, orange sliced, etc.) apples are plentiful so I th0ught putting this charm on my Christmas bracelet was very fitting.

Next we have the original now retired Candy Cane, this charm is here because as a child it was my favorite Christmas treat, I’ve always had a huge sweet tooth, and would constantly steal the candy canes off of the Christmas tree to sneak later, my mom would always wonder (not really, she always knew I stole them!) why there would only be one or two left on the tree by Christmas time!

The next charm is the Perfect Gift charm, and that one is the puffy little bow. This charm doesn’t necessarily have a meaning, it’s more of a place holder until a better charm comes around, but I like that it represents the bows we all use to put on the presents we plan on giving.

Up next is the Pine Cone, this one has a special meaning to me because as far as I can remember my mom always buys the special scented pine cones that smell like cinnamon and now as an adult I’ve carried on with that tradition and also buy them every year. I love how my house smells during Christmas!

We’ll skip the green muranos as those are also just place holders until I find other charms that will eventually take their place.

The Floral Daisy Lace clip is up next. Now these I bought ages ago because I liked that they had a different shape (not round or barrel shaped like other clips) but they were just in storage as I didn’t really know where to put them. Lo and behold as I was playing with my Christmas bracelet I realized they kind of look like those paper snowflakes that we all learn how to make in kindergarten! So I threw them on here and I’m really liking how they look! They may or may not be permanent fixtures on this bracelet but right now I’m really feeling them here.

The next charm is the original Gingerbread man! I really like this charm a lot, his little smile makes me so happy! Now I’ve never baked gingerbread cookies for Christmas, so this charm represents all baking and cooking we all do during this special time of year.

Up next is the original two tone Christmas tree. I want to say that maybe this was Pandora’s first Christmas tree and they’ve had three since then, the current one is also two tone with cute little multicolored cubic zirconia to represent the ornaments, I’ve been very tempted by that one, but at the time when I bought this one, I didn’t like the Christmas tree they had at that point so I went old school and bought this one instead. This of course represent the Christmas tree. Can you believe I still haven’t had time to decorate our tree? It’s so frustrating!! I love/hate this time of year, always so hectic and busy and stressful, it’s hard to actually enjoy the holiday sometimes 🙁

Next are the spacers which I already mentioned beforehand that they may not be permanent on this bracelet. I put them on there because years ago I saw someone style their Essence bracelet with the green and ruby beads and they called it a Christmas bracelet and I really liked the more pinky-red with the green so I decided to give it a try.

The next charm in tow is the Sparkling Surprise charm in silver, if you are an avid fan you’ll know the original Sparkling Surprise charm had the same design, only it was red enamel. It was such a well made charm, I was shocked when they retired in literally three months after they released it, it was ridiculous. But I digress, this charm obviously represents the presents we give and receive!! I love the chunkiness of it, it’s a solid charm!

Up next is the Pandora Shopping bag! I don’t think I really need to explain the meaning of this charm right? LOL I love getting Pandora for Christmas, I think only one time in recent years I didn’t get any Pandora, but then I ended up getting more X Jewellery and Trollbeads instead!

Next is the Winter Mittens charms, and this one I got because I still remember wearing them when I was little, although truth be told I think I got them more because they are adorable!! They are a little different than what Pandora usually comes out with and that won me over!

Then we come to the Holy Family charm which represents the reason for the season to me. It celebrates my faith and I like that I can dedicate a small part of my bracelet to that. If you look closely this part of my bracelet kind of tells the story of the Nativity!

The Angel of Love is the next charm in line, and this of course represents the angels coming down from heaven to announce the birth of Jesus! I just LOVE IT!

Then we have the Star Pave Dangle charm which represents the star of Bethlehem. This charm was originally on my first star bracelet which was supposed to be clear and black, but then Pandora made some really nice blue star charms so I changed the theme to black and blue and moved the clear star to this bracelet.

And finally last but not least we have the Silent Night charm which pretty much wraps up the whole story!

So I was pretty happy with how my bracelet turned out!! So happy until I saw these charms:

Introducing the Cozy Christmas House and third version of the Pandora Snowman (I think). I didn’t think I wanted any of the new Christmas charms since there were literally less than four or five charms that I added from the new Winter collection, but somehow I missed this one until I saw it in the store and fell in love with it! I mean how cute is it!! I LOVE miniatures (which probably explains my obsession with these types of charms!) and you can’t get more miniature than this!!

I mean you can actually see the tiny little fireplace (or is it a table?), the Christmas tree with actual presents underneath and lights decorating the wall behind the tree! I practically died from cuteness overload!

As for the Snowman, there’s no real meaning behind it, I was in a play where we sang Frosty the Snowman and I got to put the hat and scarf on a little kid that was playing Frosty himself but really I got him because he’s cute! But now I’ve come to the crux of the matter which is, where am I going to put these charms? And in doing so am I going to throw off the balance? Well I could’ve take off the box charm and rearranged the Sparkling Surprise charm and made the new Cozy Christmas house the center focal bead so fix the issue, but I really didn’t want to do all that, so instead I just added them LOL.

So here is the finished product:

So again, I could’ve probably rearranged most of these charms to make it symmetrical again, but whether it was laziness or just plain “I liked the way the charms are at now,” feeling, I left most of the bracelet intact…which only means I get to add a new dangle charm and another non dangle charm for next year. Hopefully Pandora will make ones I like! Technically I have room for three more charms since the muranos are just place holders, four if I get rid of the Bow charm so there’s still room to play around with!

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading all about my Christmas bracelet, it makes me happy to share the evolution of this bracelet, and it makes me feel like a real blogger again since now I tend to post real actual blog posts farther and farther in between. But I haven’t thrown in the towel yet! Next year will be a new year and I hope to be able to resume some semblance of blogging again! I also made a YouTube video about this bracelet as it was requested by quite a lot of people so if you prefer to see the bracelet up close, check it out on my channel.

Thanks for reading!