Grapevine Tabletop Christmas Tree

My tabletop grapevine tree


I made my tabletop grapevine Christmas tree many, many years ago. I store it, completely decorated, in a closet until it's time for it to come out again and make my house all Christmassy once more. It has very minimal decorations. Just a string of white mini lights and a garland of pink berries. It's armature is a tomato cage. I display it on a sofa table that I cover with crushed up vintage doilies which (in my mind) resemble a snowy forest floor.

I usually harvest grapevines in the early Fall while they're soft and supple and easy to wrap round and round the armature. That did not happen this year.

My brother and sister-in-law came for a weekend visit on the weekend before Thanksgiving. They wanted a grapevine Christmas tree for their house, too. We, all three, dressed up warmly and went into the woods to harvest grapevines, which were by this time, a bit dried out and resistant to being wrapped around an armature. But, with much struggle, bleeding fingers and cold noses, we got the job done.

We brought the gardening shears into the woods with us, harvested a whole trunk load of grapevines, set up shop in my garage and began to assemble the tree.

Work in progress

 

Voila!!! Success

 

My sister-in-law had already purchased sparkely garland for her tree the day before when we made a foray over to Hobby Lobby. They do not have a Hobby Lobby in their neck of the woods so it's always one of the places they like to visit when they come for a weekend visit to the "big sister's" house.

 

 

This is the new grapevine tree - now living in the mountains of Pennsylvania in the log house of F&B

It is sitting upon an antique hall tree hat rack in their foyer. All gussied up with sparkles.


EPILOGUE
Both my sister-in-law and myself contracted poison ivy in the woods and had to be on a 10 day regimen of prednisone for the rash. My advice to you is: be perfectly sure that all the grapevines you harvest are grapevines and not some other plant.

Christmas Traditions

One of the Christmas traditions that I share with almost everyone on the planet is the Christmas Tree. This year, mine was a bit unorthodox. I am in a position of getting familiar with a "new normal". I just was not excited about pulling out all sorts of decorations from their hiding places (for just me to enjoy) then having to put them all away again in a few weeks. But I still was up for Christmas. I wanted to get carried away with all the other traditions I was used to - like seeing the gingerbread houses made by locals at the Eastman House Museum, going to the craft sales, sacred presentations of the Christmas story, watching the old movies, etc., etc.

So you might say, my home was very sedately "Christmassy". My fireplace mantle has a snow people panorama. Many snow people standing on vintage lace "snow" in a tiny forest of evergreens under a big rusty star. Most of these snow people were hand made by me. I love this scene so much, I'm temped to leave it up all year.

For my unorthodox tree, I made cupcake papers trees that I saw on Craft Gossip. I did put my tiny presents under them. Fortunately, I did receive tiny presents (gift cards and earrings).

Another lovely tradition  is the Secret Santa that we have on the Christian Artist team on etsy (CAST). Those who want to participate fill out a questionaire about themselves, their wishes and dreams. A "director" pairs up the participants. I gifted a sister from the midwest and I received from a sister in the state right next door to my own state. But some sent and received gifts from the UK, from Australia, Canada and other hinder parts of the planet. And some from right next door. Amazingly, the gifts were perfect and such a blessing to both sender and receiver.

My gift arrived from a sister who's had some health problems recently and was also greatly affected by hurricane Sandy, therefore, unable to shop outside the home. I'm sure she has no idea how much her gift blessed me and how precious it is to me. She purchased from another CAST sister a pair of pearl earrings. I'm sure she didn't know my name means "pearl".

The formation of this gem involves a great amount of irritation and pressure happening inside that little mollusk before a beautiful pearl is formed. I love to think about heaven's gates being formed by this jewel and how our Savior always changes for good whatever He touches.

Here are the beautiful earrings I received from my Secret Santa (you know santa means holy).

One final tradition for the Christmas season in my neck of the woods is a White Christmas. Everyone was longing for it. We had spring like weather until just a couple weeks ago..............then, voila!!!

A Christmas Card sort of Christmas

Recycled Christmas Cards

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There are so many uses for those wonderful Christmas greetings you receive each year. It would be a good habit to just get a BIG box and save them because you never know what kind of an idea you'll imagine in the future.

In the past I have made gift tags with them and the best book marks ever. But yesterday, while doing my work-out walk in the mall, I passed by a furniture store window and something I saw in the window of a furniture store sparked this idea.

I am an inveterate estate saler and I buy things that tickle my fancy. I've had this ancient rusty old iron receipt piercer forever and never really thought of any good use for it. But now it is the base and tree trunk of a little Christmas Card tree.


I sat at my kitchen table with my stash of Christmas Cards from years past and cut out six pointed Stars of David. Then I jabbed them onto the receipt holder, curling the points a bit with the scissors, piling them up, making smaller and smaller stars.....until.............voila!!! a little Christmas Tree made from stars cut from old Christmas cards.

It needed a star on top. I rummaged through my jewels and found the perfect rhinestone star earring.

Here's a close up shot of some of the card stars.



At the moment I am thinking of some ways you could adapt this idea to fit the type of reusable goodies you have around the house. How about using a tiny clay pot for the base, sliding a knitting needle in the hole in the bottom. Then stacking your Christmas Card stars on the needle to fashion your very own tree. How about drilling a hole in an old children's alphabet block, perhaps glueing a pencil into hole and building your tree on that base? Let your imagination soar..............