Expert advice from Bob Vila, the most trusted name in home improvement, home remodeling, home repair, and DIY.

This was the first year, in many years, that Hubs and I decorated our tree by ourselves. Our daughters are married and have homes and families of their own. Our son is away at Marine training (but will hopefully be home for a few days near Christmas).  Said son is now a Marine Reservist while finishing college and working two other jobs so he still wasn't home to help with the tree decorating.

Without the kids around to fight over ornaments or step on each other's toes, the house was strangely quiet, except for the Christmas music playing in the background.

What I noticed when opening our box of ornaments was that several of them needed a bit of TLC. Over the years, I haven't really done much with the ornaments except unwrap, hang, unhang, re- wrap, and re-pack.

I decided that this year would be the time to repair and refurbish some of those little cuties. I put together a little kit to help with the process.

I used my Sparkle Cleaner, a jewelry polishing cloth, super glue, small sharp scissors, and a small paint brush. I also ended up using some clear finger-nail polish which I didn't show in the picture.

The sparkle cleaner and a soft cloth worked well for cleaning glass ornaments. The jewelry polishing cloth polished metal ornaments until they shone. Super glue reattached loose ribbon and trims, re- secured wobbly eye-hooks and wire hangers, and reunited broken pieces of ornaments. The scissors worked well for trimming loose threads and frayed ribbon.

I used the small paint brush to touch up some ornaments, using acrylic craft paints. The clear fingernail polish worked well as a top coat after the paint dried (leaves a shiny finish).

 

I found a few ornaments this year that needed new eye hooks so I rummaged through the garage and found some new ones.  The shiny new hooks look much better than the rusty, dull ones.

I'm happy to have that little chore finished - it wasn't planned but I feel better that our family ornaments are looking good.

 

I also tossed out all of the old hooks which are probably over 30 years old and replaced them with new ones I purchased at post Christmas sales.  Much better!