Here's My Christmas Tree

Ha! Good one Blooms - the thing you put the tree in! LOL

Kelli, that's a beautiful tree. Are some of those vintage ornaments, or make to look like vintage? They are beautiful. And love the poinsettias!

Debra

Beautiful Tree Kelli!

These Trees and displays are Perfect! Thanks for ALL the ideas to 'borrow'!

tabasco the Room, as usual, looks perfect.
We're off to Dusty's for a look at her's in person tomorrow!
Ric

Thank you, magoobu, Bernie, Blooms, Debra, and Jazzpunkin. By standard I mean nothing too unusual - normal size, no theme. And yes, some of those are vintage ornaments.

You are such lucky people out there to have ornaments handed down from generations. I don't have any idea what happened to ours. The only tree decorations I have from childhood are little red felt stockings I made in my teens. Don't remember the exact year, would have been early to mid 70's - I cut out over 200 stockings about 3" high and sewed them together with a little grossgrain ribbon loop to hang on the tree. My mother liked to give "open houses" during the holidays and send everyone home with a little stocking filled with a mini candy cane and a Hershey's kiss. (that's all it would hold) I have a box full of the ones left over. Some are a little faded, but in pretty good shape for the most part. When she was in a nursing home, I decorated a tabletop tree in her room with them. They're kinda cute on a mini tree. I think I'll decorate a mini tree with them this weekend!

Debra

Debra, the floral "something" is beautiful and great, shaping it like you want ....7 hours !?

Kelly, your tree is gorgeous and the pink poinsettia makes me envious !LOL
Adina

LOL! It didn't take 7 hours just to shape the "something" - it took that long to set up the tree, fluff it, and put all the decorations on it! The "something" was probably the easiest part.

Hello Ya'll......
Love ye from an old E-Texican guy.

I put up a Fiber Optic tree.
Purty as it goes!
Couple of my eight kids come by and ask why I don't do tha big magnamamous tree?

Answer is;
You gonna come look?
____________

I will drive many miles to see yours.
From where I live there are hundreds of the best.
-
Thanks good guys for tha best thar Is.........

kelli - thats a beautiful tree you have there. it's great seeing all these trees and the decorations that go with them

Well, with the extreme weather around here, there's little else to do but stay inside. We finally got all of the old (some of them hilarious) ornaments onto the tree. Our tree always looks like a mishmash, but it's family archaeology, and the kids wouldn't have it any other way. I have little paper notes my kids made when they were little and things I made when I was in elementary school. It's not for everyone, but we like it...even though there's not a spare branch anywhere.

What beautiful trees on this thread! It's so fun to see into everyone's houses all decorated for the holidays - they're all just lovely. Let's have a virtual party!

We had a big article in the Austin newspaper the other day about how you can hire this lady to "design" your tree for you. All coordinating colors, etc. Yes very pretty indeed. So I thought no more about it until today...in the editorial section...some lady wrote in how that type of tree is void of any love and so it is pretty...but it is empty of memories and lacking in character. All of your trees are wonderful. Looks like a lot of love and memories and happiness in them all! And of course...you all are a bunch of characters!! LOL!

Hey Charlie, where is a picture of your tree?

Michelle

Debra, it was worth it !

Beautiful tree, galega!

ey Michelle,
give me a moment or three.
Came is after being silly. Day was beautiful !

Worked way to hard.
I am trying to quite smoking, stop tha boose, leave wild women alone.

My kobota thingy keeps talking at me.
Can't walk but can ride.
Wow is me!
___________________

Haha but my little fiber tingy is perfect for me.
Shades of Alabama!
Private story.

Been married over 50 yr.
Done tree's and trees !
Flocked and____Big.
Eight children are one thing.

Grandchildren are easy.
They don't remember!

Good nite 'cause I have to run 400 mile in tha morn.
Sweet taters from east texas.
4 thousand pounds......

Mayhaw Jelly!
will be picked up

Well Charlie you just toss some my way...and one of these days you have to make your way down this way for a visit.

Here is our rather abundant tree. It is appears to be extravagant, but a huge number of the ornaments were ones culled from our stores. We sold vast quantities of ornaments for 20 years and there was always a lot of breakage to recycle. So a great deal or these have missing limbs, or sizable holes in them or other significant damage. It is truly a tree of sorry characters but scattered among them are some that are old family treasures. Most precious are my DH's 50 year old cub scout handiwork, his Bake-a-bobble ornaments. We always put a mass of old red birds at the top. This started during a very sad christmas that we had to have in Fla in 1980 when my DH's dad was dying. We were determined to have a tree, but we could find almost nothing we would want to buy, so we bought a bunch of these birds and a roll of red velvet ribbon and tied the tree with tiny bows and silver jingle bells (which we still hang) and the birds. Then we bought a live Norfolk pine to decorate. After Christmas we planted that tree and it is still growing in his honor in the Fla Keys. I will post a second collage of my christmas prunings. I go out a cut lots of things from our yard to make decorations out of each year. I just pile lots of the greenery and winterberry together to decorate the house. Quick and no cost. While pruning a cedar I found the bird nest, so it became part of the decoration. This year I made a gum drop tree for the kitchen using branches bearberry, Arctostaphylos uva ursi and some gummy worms. My ode to bag worms sure to come. Happy holidays. Patti

The prunings. Patti

Patti,
That is a beautiful tree! And a beautiful story of the ornaments' history. What a poignant story of the red birds. They are positioned the way live birds would be and look as thought they might take off in a flurry of wings at any moment. Your home is lovely and looks very inviting with the natural decorations. Thanks so much for sharing.
Debra

Patti -- your tree and decorations are just gorgeous! The fact that so many of the ornaments are meaningful adds to the wonder. Nature is decorating outdoors for us today in Albuquerque. We're having a big snowfall right now and all the desert plants are thickly coated with white.

Patti everything you have done the tree and all looks FABULOUS!!!! wonderful job I love it!

Tree is up and decorated...it took awhile because we were waiting for our DGD to come over to help (she's been helping since she could crawl around the tree and she's 11 now). Now the gifts need to be wrapped so Santa and Mrs. Claus can have their eggnog and cookies!

I just want to sit right down in that wonderful room! Great tree Great home!

Patti, what a beautiful and meaningful tree! And I love all your cuttings - my Mom used to do that when I was a kid... go down to the creek behind our house and cut all kinds of evergreen boughs and cedars (I think). She's make her own garlands for the stair railings. Probably why my first career was a florist.

Dann_L - what a beautiful tree! Thank you for sharing! Bet you had fun with DGD!

Everyone's trees and memories shared are lovely!

Brenda

I just happened upon this thread and am in hog heaven looking at such gorgeous trees - makes me want to do more than one tree (dh would faint at the thought, plus our house is small . . . what WAS I thinking???!!!). Our tree is finally up and almost decorated. I'll try to take a pic in the next day or two.

Last year I had a very young, very crazy kitten who spent most of the season in the tree - I thought for sure she would do it again this year, but guess she decided her 12 pounds were a bit much for it!! The other two cats don't even consider it (I got them as adults last year, too). The photo is the little darling last year.

Thanks for sharing such lovely trees and memories - and humor!!! We keep our tree in a plastic zippered bag designed for artificial trees - dh says it looks like a body bag. Good heavens, I may have to find a different way to store it!!!

Now that is one furry ornament! and cute too boot!!!

Thanks, magoobu - I dearly enjoyed having her love the tree so much and, although she would be able to do a lot more damage this year, I find I'm a bit disappointed in her lack of interest! I guess there's no satisfying me!!

Dann - so pretty! love the lights reflecting in the window. can you get us a close-up of that cute little moose standing beneath the tree? he looks like a character.

Murmur - what a sweet face peeking out of that tree!

One of these threads has link to a website featuring a pair of cats demonstrating how to decorate a tree. It's a scream! Has anyone seen it? Definitely worth the time.

Debra

Our tree has some disabilities, but the Amaryllis helps. :-) DH had a terrible time finding a real tree this year. By the time he did, they were pretty well picked over.

lol we had that problem last year...Rita took a bite out of most of the local tree farms plus I (silly me) thought Dec 2 was early enough to pick out a tree...

That's a perfectly fine tree!
Reminds me of going with my dad to the woods to find a tree. They all looked so good from afar & not so nice close up. But a tree was a tree & it always turned out beautiful.
Merry Christmas,
Bernie

Hi Bernie! I used to go with my dad to chop a tree too. We went Christmas eve morning, decorated it all afternoon, and left it up until New Year's. Some years they looked better than others.

A few more ornaments would help, but they've gotten broken and scattered through the years. I had some girlfriends over for breakfast Sunday morning and they made the top for me out of aluminum foil. I'll have it for years now.

The Moose :o)))

DW made him out of a couple of 2x4's and some odds and ends parts many years ago at a craft class. He's pretty friendly, doesn't eat much and seldom gets rambunctious. AND so far he hasn't learned how to climb the tree!!!

Dann - thanks for the close up. Tell DW she did a great job. Check out the eyelashes!
Debra

Love the trees, everybody! And the little homemade foil tree topper. Just what I need, too. Very clever!

The moose-y looks like it came from one of those fancy charity christmas craft shows. Very cute, too!

We are baking Christmas cookies today-- iced sugar cookies, ginger spice stars and some chocolate chippers. It's hard to get in the mood though with this 60 degree weather here--not that I'm complaining! I love it really!

Today is the Winter Solstice--so we should all go out tonight and dance around in the moonlight and hope for a gorgeous green growing garden next spring! I would have to have a few Christmas toddies first, though!

Keep decorating, everyone. We love all the photos!

I like your idea about dancing around in the moonlight, tobasco. Maybe we will see some photos of a few of those "dances"???? Could be interesting..... Debra

Cookies?
Did I hear Cookies? LOL

Love that Moose Dann_L
Can you DMail me a closer look?


Love ALL these Trees and Ideas!
Ric

Tabasco and Henryr10, I just read in another forum a great ginger cookie recipe. I am making them in a few minutes as my mom is flying in tomorrow and her favorite thing is ginger. She is going on 92 and has more energy and brains than me. So check out this recipe which uses both candied ginger and fresh grated ginger, yummy. Patti

Forum: Recipes
Too late for the cookie contest, BUT..
luna_baby
Dec 19, 2006
1:56 PM
These are SO good. Crisp edges, chewy middle, luscious ginger

Ohhhh, Patti. You just caused me to have to add to my grocery list! They do sound good.
Debra

Dan LOL that deer is Dear!!!!

McGlory I see absolutely NO disabilties in your wonderful tree! I think is looks marvelous!

But that did crack me up!

Love all the trees above. We finally got ours up. The ceiling at the beam is 10 1/2 feet. Now that we are buying balsam, we are able to get slender trees. All the while the kids were growing up we went out and chopped a spruce which was always bushier, though often with significant gaps. This is a good tree - open enough to get ornaments INTO the tree, not just at the tips of the branches, but full enough to look good. It's mostly the light that makes it look like there is a big hole on one side.

Ann

bbrookrd--will look up the recipe--in what other forum, though? I love those ginger cookies you described!

So many pretty trees--and some of them even real! Nothing like fresh greens in the house at Christmas time!