Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories 1 - Chritmas Tree

It would not be Christmas without a Christmas tree.  We did start off married life with the real thing - but I had enough of trying to get  pine needles off the carpet, so we went onto an artificial tree - traditional style  - no modern, minimalist designer trees in our home!

Reading some of the house-style magazines, some people focus on colour themes such as silver & blue, or red & gold etc. for their Christmas Trees.

For our family the Christmas Tree is one of happy memories.

In the past it featured my young daughter's home-made decorations - who can forget the bells made from egg cartons covered in baking foil?

Now the Christmas tree signifies our hobbies and holidays


At one stage I was an avid cross stitcher and made a series of little stockings to hang on the tree.  (I bought the cross stitch ball on the right in Austria). 

I enjoyed taking part in a  Christmas crafts workshop 

and came home with this decorated bell.

 

Reflecting our other pastimes are miniature instruments and a music scroll.

Ballet is my favourite art form and I bought this stocking one December  at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, after seeing a magical performance of "Sleeping Beauty"/

  

Holidays have been a rich source of delights for our Christmas tree with decorations here from Austria, Bruges and Poland.  Bells, stars. hearts and "zwiebel turms"  - the onion domes that are such a feature of the churches in Austria.

 

Other favourites:

Discovering the decorations again when we get the boxes down from the loft is pleasure in itself. Our tree is quite small but looking at it every year, brings back memories of happy times.  

Copyright © 2014 · Susan Donaldson. All Rights Reserved.

Adapted from earlier Christmas postings but with new photographs. 

I  hope it will be of interest to my newer readers.

“The Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories (ACCM) allows you to share your family’s holiday history twenty-four different ways during December! Learn more at http://adventcalendar.geneabloggers.com.