The Symbolism of Our Tree...

Hello Dear Friends!
We hope that your holiday plans are going well, whatever they may be.  Our Christmas traditions tend to be quiet ones and ones we have developed on our own, revolving around our memories of wonderful times in our past.  Our Christmas tree reflects much of the first few years of Victor's and my life together.

All of the ornaments, except for two, were handmade by me with paper, glue, rubber stamps, ink, Stickles, ribbons and glitter twine.  They were made for the 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 Christmas seasons.

This is the star that I use for the top of the tree.  It's an ornament that I altered with a picture of Marie Antoinette and a piece of ribbon.  It represents our first day in Paris, when we went to see an exhibit of paintings and personal items that were owned by Marie Antoinette at the Grand Palais.

This little fan is one that I made to be a replica of the fans that I made for the guests at our wedding. The week we were married ended up being 10 degrees hotter than had originally predicted and so I thought I should make something to help guests feel a bit cooler.

The star in the upper left is one I made from paper and was the original star for the tree when I bought the tree many years before.  The ornament at the top is made from a stamp for that first Christmas that Victor lived in Washington.  The Eiffel Tower on the upper right obviously symbolizes Paris and I decorated it with Stickles to show how it looks at night.  The ornament at the bottom right symbolizes desserts, the ones we had at our tea party wedding reception, as well as the ones we got from jewel-box patisseries in Paris.  The ornament at the bottom left is the final scene from the movie "Amelie", our favorite movie.  We were married during the full moon and the ornament in the middle is my interpretation of it.

Here are more desserts and tea cup, decorated with inks and Stickles.  The lady with the festive hat is from my Chapeaux de Gateaux project, also decorated with Black Diamond Stickles (which has twinkles of purple, green and orange in it.  See the enlarged photos below.)  Ornament on right is an image of the brooch that I wore on my wedding dress.

The ornament on the top left was made using rubber stamps and the stamp with the birds was the one we used on the menus and the CDs of music I made for the wedding.  The ornament on the top right includes a picture that was taken of us in front of the huge mirror in the hallway of The Woodrow Wilson House, just before we were married in the garden there.  The ornament in the lower left includes another image from the movie "Amelie".

The flowers on the ornament on the left were the ones that we used on the wedding invitations and wedding programs we made.  The ornament on the right contains an envelope from one of the kinds of tea that we served at the wedding, covered in the same ribbon that I used to tie my bridal bouquet.

The stamp used on this ornament is the one I used on the envelopes of the music CDs we gave as favors at the wedding.

The same year we were married (in 2007), there was a Joseph Cornell exhibit at The National Portrait Gallery in Washington.  We attended the exhibit and I copied this quote of his from one of the collages.

The first Christmas we were married, the White House ornament from The White House Historical Association for that year was this one.  It depicts another Washington wedding on a warm summer evening, the only time a President was married there.  This was the wedding of Grover Cleveland and Frances Folsom, on June 2, 1886.  It is another interesting coincidence that Grover Cleveland is an ancestor of mine and Frances Folsom is an ancestor of my brother-in-law Mike.

This picture and the two that follow are ones that I took one morning recently, with the sunlight making everything on the tree twinkle.

And the final two photos are ones I took today, just as we were losing the light on this cold and snowy day, the week before Christmas.

The tree is lit with red, amber and purple lights, a set I bought many years ago at a shop in Union Station in Washington.

I'm hoping that your Christmas holiday is as filled with light and wonderful memories as ours is.

Please check back here soon, as the next post will be about a very special Christmas Eve treat for the members of the Doll and Animal Family!