Festival of Trees

On Sunday afternoon our whole family headed to our local county historical museum to see their annual Festival of Trees. My MOPS group has decorated a tree for this festival the past several years so I usually take the boys to it. However, this was the first time DH had been there. In addition to seeing all the lovely trees we had a special experience. One of the volunteers started playing the antique player piano for my boys. She invited them to help her "pump" it. Below you can see the feet of my oldest son as he "plays" the song "Winter Wonderland." You should have seen the look on my boys' faces when the piano started playing all by itself. My big boy was so proud to have helped play the song and was talking animatedly to the other guests at the museum about his experience. He later whispered to me, "Mommy, what do you think is the best part so far?" I said, "Is it when you got to play the player piano?" He said, "YES!" It was very interesting to see how the piano worked and how you can change the songs it plays. The volunteer estimated the piano to be about 100 years old and said it was in great condition. I think my maternal grandfather had a player piano in his parlor. Mom, is that right? What ever happened to it? What a bummer that it is probably lost from our family forever.



Anyway..........my boys enjoyed looking at all the trees. They also liked choosing their favorite tree in the "adult" and "youth" category. One of the most unique "trees" was this one completely made from Diet Coke cans.

Below are some pictures I took of some of my favorite trees.

This one was GORGEOUS. I loved the lime green and red together. So pretty!

This one I also loved. It was decorated by the public library. It was covered with Little Golden Books. (The theme of the festival was the celebration of the museum's 50th birthday. So lots of the trees sported a "gold" theme.)

Being a former 4-Her, I loved this white tree with green accents (green is also my favorite color) that was decorated by a local 4-H club.

The next tree was the one I voted for because it was decorated by my MOPS group. It was called "Moms have hearts of Gold" or something similar to that. Great job fellow MOPS gals who decorated this one!!

I also really loved this red and purple tree decorated by our local Red Hat Society.

I am already thinking it would be fun to have my boys decorate a tree for next year's festival. The theme is "Homespun Holidays". I'll have to get my wheels turning to think of what we could do. Maybe we could just use the decorations we're making this year for our Advent project. Anyway, I'm sure we will enjoy next year's festival as much as this one.