Christmas Tree Festival

As promised in my last post, which was a visit to Christkindl at Granger Homestead in Canandaigua, NY, part two of that illustrious day was the Christmas Tree Festival. This takes place inside the Granger Mansion and is an annual event. Insight I gathered from my research is: that this a holiday decorating contest. The entries are judged. Honors given. Entries may include artificial trees (only) from 2.5 feet to 7 feet, mantle decorations, tabletop decorations, and wreathes. The entries are auctioned off or sold outright.

Every room in the entire first floor of the mansion is decorated with contest entries.  It's opulent. If you don't walk out of there in the mood for Christmas, you may be suffering from grinchitis.

Granger Homestead - Canandaigua, NY

 

 

decorated with handknit elf clothing

 

tree of books - tabletop tree 3rd place prizewinner

created by Ontario County Literacy Volunteers

 

mantelpiece décor

 

 mantelpiece décor - 2nd prize winner for mantelpiece dec

 

you know who from Whoville

 

 

Impressive snowman wreath - DIY-ers take note

He won 3rd prize - created by Girl Scout Troop 

 

 

And finally, on my way home, I had to get out of the car on one of the blocked off streets near the Granger Homestead, to take a picture of this house. I was so impressed with it's symmetry, it's color combination, it's age, it's charm. I would move right in. All in all, a totally lovely Fall outing.

 

 

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Christmas is all about gifts. Who doesn't love gifts and Christmas? No matter how you say it - Buon Natale, Feliz Navidad, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Seasons Greetings - there wouldn't be any of it without the perfect King leaving His heavenly kingdom and experiencing a human birth so He, as one of us (human) for a time, could carry out the divine plan of redeeming us from the curse. The Father's Gift to us. This scripture says it best:  2Cor. 9:15 "Now thanks be to God for His Gift (precious) beyond telling (His indescribable, inexpressible, free Gift)" Amplified Bible.

 

It's reason to celebrate



 

This old tale by Clement Moore sits on my piano

 

I made this little grapevine tree by wrapping grapevine around and around a tomato cage. I made most of the snow people too. The snow lady with hat and fur, you can find in my etsy shop.

I made this angel on a long ago Christmas. It never gets put away. I want to see it all the time.

These 3 little trees are all made from vintage bedspreads and have old wooden spools for trunks. You can find these in my etsy shop as well

I like to put Christmas time on  the mantelpiece

Close up of the Nativity scene on the mantelpiece

                     How do you celebrate and give thanks for this awesome gift?

A Holiday House Tour

On Saturday last, myself and my two "house tour" buddies went to The Federated Garden Clubs of New York State Candlelight Holiday Tour. There were six houses on the tour and each was decorated in holiday finery by the Garden Clubs which means that the outside of the houses as well as inside were bedecked by flowers, greenery, berries, seed pods, pine cones, ribbons, etc. It was glorious to behold.

You could visit the homes in whatever order you chose. The first house we visited was the Stone-Tolan House, built in 1792, the oldest house in our county. The docents in each house were encyclopedias of the history of each home. When Mr. Stone and his pioneer family lived in this Federal-style structure, it was part of a 300 acre farm. The house is such a classic style that it looks like it could have been built last year.

anonymous tour goers waiting in line to see the home



 

Evidence that the Garden Club was here

 

no electric blankets - you put live coals in this tin box-then pop in under the covers

no Wegman's either - you preserved meat in a smoke house like this one

tester bed - handmade coverlet

Heart of the home - soups - stews - pies - biscuits cooked here

 

this is what the modern bathroom looked like in the 18th century

 



Because this home is now a museum, pictures were permitted to be taken in it. Not so with the other homes on the tour. Suffice it to say, this was the house I enjoyed visiting the most. There was another, an 1840 house, that was a close second. But people lived in it. It was scrumptiously fitted with antiques of the period plus filled with Christmas. I did take a couple pics of the garden there. Here's one:



My friends and I always enjoy a leisurely lunch when we do a "girlz day" like this. All in all, a totally delightful outing.





 

 

Handmade Christmas Decorations

My house is ready to embrace Christmas visitors. I've made room, by relocating all the Fall decorations to a closet until Fall of 2014 and dragging out all the Christmas decorations from their hiding places and setting them up in places of honor for this season.

The one new  embellishment I made for this year is the wreath on my front door. I had seen one like it at a shop and knew I had all the materials in my stash. I went home from my outing in the country and put together this wreath in a flash where it hangs proudly on my front door waiting to greet holiday visitors.

I set out a grapevine tree, which I made years ago. It's a table top tree. I scrunched up a couple vintage lace doilies on the table to resemble snow, then set the tree on top of the lace "snow". Also, standing knee deep in snow are a few snow people - standing guard over the tree.

I have two grapevine trees, each in a matching pot, standing guard over the front entry of my house.

These grapevine trees are a joy to make in the Fall. I wrap wild grapevine round and round a tomato cage 'til I'm happy with how it looks. I may have to secure some bits of the grapevine to the tomato cage with bits of florist wire (to secure the vine to the base structure). Once done, these trees can be used over and over again ad infinitum. I have mine all twirled with tiny white lights, which I normally just leave on when I store the trees at the end of the season. I cover the whole enchilada with a giant garbage bag - and into storage it goes until next Christmas season.

There are millions of spots near where I live to access wild grapevine. I usually bring my pruning shears when I'm on the hunt. I toss huge, long strings of vine into the trunk of my car. I leave the vines outdoors until I'm ready the make the trees. I make them outdoors too because the process produces a huge mess of dried leaves (which just get mixed in with the leaves that have fallen off the trees in my garden and eventually raked up and dragged to the curbside for the town to collect and dispose of).

One little important note: if you intend to make grapevine trees and don't get to it right away, remove the leaves clinging to the vine, twirl the vine into circles and put in a tub of water - leave this outdoors - the water will keep the vines nice and supple so you can wrap them around the tomato cage - otherwise they will dry out - become brittle and difficult to wrap around the cage - this lesson was learned the usual hard way.


These three little trees, I made last year. They are cupcake paper liners trees. Made by removing the flat bottom of decorative cupcake liners. The pleated sides of the liners are then wrapped, layer over layer, around styrofoam "trees" and attached to the form with straight pins. On the very top of the "tree" fit a tiny cone made with a scrap from the discarded cupcake paper bottoms. I have mine displayed atop a spool of pink crochet cotton "tree trunk".

Christmas time - my favorite time of year. "Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift"   11 Cor.9:15

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..............

Snowballs in the Window Boxes

This week, I want to do a small tutorial about how to make "snow balls" for your window boxes. I have been wanting to make them for such a long time but I never wanted to spend all the cash it was going to cost to fill four window boxes with snowballs. But, recently, I got a "deal".

We have a shop in the town where I live that sells the leftovers of people's craft projects. Folks actually donate their leftovers (zippers, buttons, fabric, ribbon, elastic, beads, yarn, needles, hooks, patterns, styrofoam, and everything else you can possibly imagine) to this little shop. The name is - Craft Bits 'n Pieces. The shop is actually a fund raising organization which supports services for seniors in our town. Things like transportation to doctor's appointments via Elderbus and Options for Independence Programs.

So I was able to get 24 styrofoam balls for a very small investment.

This is my supplies list for 24 snowballs

1 - 2 32 oz.tubs of all purpose spackling paste.
2 - as many 12" wood skewers as you have balls
3 - glitter
4 - a plastic butter knife
5 - some styro packing material (to dry the snow balls in)

This is kind of a messy job. I did this down my basement.

Method: Open one of the containers of spackle. Dip the sharp end of a skewer into the spackling paste, then plunge the spackled end all the way into the styrofoam ball.

Holding the ball in one hand, ice the ball with the spackling paste. At some point, you'll need to hold the ball by the skewer in order to ice the bottom. Sprinkle with glitter. Set it into your styrofoam packing material to dry. I left mine to dry for a couple days.

Do this with all your styrofoam balls. After they've dried, set them amidst piney greenery in your window boxes. This is how they'll look.