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Literary Themed Christmas Trees

Natasha Maw — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 01:36:23 +0000

Ahh the Festival of Trees! Our favorite time of the year!! Here in Salt Lake City, the Festival of Trees, is an annual event where individuals, groups, and organizations decorate and donate Christmas trees, wreaths, centerpieces, quilts, gingerbread houses and gift items. Everything is auctioned off and every single penny (I literally mean every single penny – everything is done on a volunteer basis) goes to the Primary Children’s Medical Center.

It is their largest fundraiser and raises millions of dollars. Between 70,000 and 80,000 people attend the festival each year and there are hundred of trees. Many of the trees are donated in somebody’s name or by friends and family of children who have either passed or have received compassionate care at the hospital. Many of the stories and photos of the children will make you cry.

To say that I adore this fundraiser is an understatement. It is simply amazing!! Each year, I have taken special notice of the literary themed Christmas trees so I can share them with you here.

Anne of Green Gables themed Christmas tree:

There is always a Harry Potter inspired tree:

And while there is a Twilight inspired Christmas tree every year, this year there was not one, not two, not three, not four but five Twilight Christmas trees. Obviously, a lot of fans around here.

Three Wizard of Oz trees:

Peanuts tree:

Dr. Suess is always a popular tree:

This Dr. Suess tree is titled, “Oh, The Places You’ll Go:”

This tree was gorgeous! Complete with bookish quotes, a fireplace underneath, and all kinds of wrapped books:

Goodnight, Moon:

The Jungle Book:

Lot’s of snowmen books under this snowman tree:

The name of this tree was A Critter’s Christmas and it had a lot of bug type books included:

Winnie the Pooh is another tree that we see every year:

The Secret Garden inspired Christmas tree:

A picture book Christmas tree complete with a paper mache Where the Wild Things Are. I didn’t get it in the photo but there was also a good sized bookcase full of books included.

These little elves were just too cute. And fun books too!

Christmas picture books included with this tree:

While this tree was not inspired by one particular book, it was just too adorable to pass up. Lots of princess books were under the tree.

I loved Raggedy Ann and Andy when I was little:

The books that were with this little tiny tree were almost as big as the tree which was titled, A Christmas Story:

Only one Nightmare Before Christmas tree this year. My little boy said this theme was what he would be watching for.

A Jane Austen Christmas:

Diary of a Wimpy Kid:

This little tree was set up on a gorgeous Lord of the Rings chess set:

And while these last few may not particularly be literary inspired, they get honorable mentions here because they were so creative. Although, Cookie Monster shows up in a lot of books though right?

And this surfing Santa was made with four leaning Christmas trees:

And yes, these are tires:

And two of my boys favorite trees that they couldn’t get enough of:

Did you have a favorite?! Tell me which one you loved the most. And if you didn’t get your fill, check out year’s past for more.

Today’s post is day 6 of the 2010 Virtual Advent Tour – where every day bloggers are sharing their thoughts about Christmas. Do follow everybody’s posts!

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Literary Themed Christmas Trees

Natasha Maw — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:48:15 +0000

It’s not really Christmas season until we go to the Festival of Trees, an annual event where individuals, groups, and organizations decorate and donate Christmas trees, wreaths, centerpieces, quilts, gingerbread houses and gift items. Everything is auctioned off and every single penny (I literally mean every single penny – everything is done on a volunteer basis) goes to the Primary Children’s Medical Center. It is their largest fundraiser and raises millions of dollars. Between 70,000 and 80,000 people attend the festival each year and there are hundred of trees.

My family adores this event. For us, it really kicks off the Christmas season. We have decorated and donated two trees (I also blogged about them last year - check them out) in the past and this year while I didn’t help decorate I did help provide supplies for the tree below. It was decorated by group of 8-11 year-old girls and they have so much fun doing it. It turned out so cute! I’m trying to convince my family to do a tree next year. We buy everything on the after Christmas sales and then store it for a year. I think that tree below cost me $10!

This was the first year we checked out the craft section. My little guy loved it (I had to squeeze in a photo of one of the boys)!

While checking out all of the awesome displays, I took pictures of all of the literary themed Christmas trees and gingerbread houses. This is Dr. Seuss The Grinch Stole Christmas:

Cloudy with a Chance for Meatballs:

While I don’t know if the movie UP! was based on a book or not, I had to share this house with you. My awesome neighbor made it and it auctioned for $800!! What a great way to give for the holidays.

Humpty Dumpty:

The Grinch (we’ll be seeing a lot of him):

This tree had a large display of books underneath it. Each tree is auctioned off with everything underneath it and the entire display. Sometimes this includes huge ticket items like televisions, furniture, fireplaces, electronics, etc. These will sell for tens of thousands of dollars.

This one used books on the tree!

A Grinch tree:

The sign on this one says, “It always rains in Forks” and is decorated with forks. I can only imagine that this is inspired from the Twilight books. Weird! Last year there was an awesome Twilight tree.

Another Grinch tree:

An upside down Nightmare Before Christmas tree:

Polar Express tree:

A Goodnight Moon tree:

Lots of frog books with this one:

Winnie the Pooh:

The sign says Enlighten the Children and has several picture books on it:

Tree with the book Sadako:

Wizardof Oz tree:

Another Wizard of Oz tree:

An Eric Carle tree. Check out that quilt!

This tree was titled Fairy Tales:

Fancy Nancy tree:

Lots of books under this tree!

Another Grinch tree:

A Shrek palm tree:

If that wasn’t enough for you check out last years post with more literary themed Christmas trees! Which tree was your favorite? If you decorated a literary themed Christmas tree, how would you decorate it?

Today’s post is day 10 of the 2009 Virtual Advent Tour – where every day bloggers are sharing their thoughts about Christmas. Check out the listing of the entire month as well as those also posting today: Becky at One Literature Nut, Vanessa at Reading in Bed and Lexie at Poisoned Rationality.

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Literary Themed Christmas Trees

Natasha Maw — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 13:11:27 +0000

This past weekend we went to the Festival of Trees, an annual event where individuals, groups, and organizations decorate and donate a Christmas tree. These trees are then sold and every single penny (we’re talking millions here) raised goes to provide medical care for needy children at Primary Children’s Medical Center. Between 70,000 and 80,000 people attend the Festival of Trees each year. It’s huge! This was the second year that we (by we, I mean I’m in charge of twenty 8-11 year olds at church) decorated and donated a tree. They enjoy it so much that I have a feeling that I’ve started a tradition.

This is the tree we did last year (it’s worth posting again, because when I wrote about it last year I had zero readership on this blog):

It’s a small photo so I don’t know if you can really tell, but it’s a candy tree. This year they wanted to do a snowman and snowflake tree. I was so nervous that we would get there and find out it was still for sale but it wasn’t. Yay!

I had to show you the top because that’s my favorite part. The girls made the snowmen heads. Adorable. Participating in the Festival of Trees is one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done. I hope to continue to do something every year.

So while browsing all the other hundreds of trees, I took photos of all the literary themed Christmas trees to share with you. This one is set atop of a bookshelf filled with books:

Obviously inspired by How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Suess this was one of my favorite displays. Among the most creative I’ve seen in years:

This tree had books on it:

I have to admit that this is the first year I’ve seen manequins among the displays. This one is taken from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens:

This tree is perhaps one of the oddest I’ve seen. It’s inspired from a book titled Christmas Shoes(although I’m not 100% sure which book that is):

This is an I Spy Christmas tree. My little boy LOVES the I Spybooks:

Two Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne trees:

I loved this Dr. Suesstree:

A Twilightinspired tree (just wait, there’s a great Twilight tree below!):

This tree was titled “The Love of Reading”

This was a huge Cullen Christmas tree. It was so crowded around it that you could hardly see it. Everything under the tree is a gift for each of the characters in Twilight:

Pretty cool. There was also a Twilightgingerbread house. Notice Edward in the tree outside Bella’s window and Jacob’s truck in the driveway:

These last two are not literary inspired but well worth sharing. Can you believe people make these and donate them to be auctioned for the Children’s hospital? Very awesome.

This one has little balls that go up and down it.

So there you go! Which was your favorite literary themed Christmas tree?

The Festival of Trees – A Great Cause

Natasha Maw — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:32:42 +0000

What an adventure! I’m a group leader for 18 eight to eleven year old girls and this year as a service project we decorated and donated a Christmas tree to the Festival of Trees. The Festival of Trees is an annual event where individuals, groups, and organizations decorate and donate a Christmas tree. These trees are then sold and every single penny raised goes to provide medical care for needy children at Primary Children’s Medical Center. Between 70,000 and 80,000 people attend the Festival of Trees each year. In other words, it’s a large event! I let the girls take the lead and they decided upon a candy themed Christmas tree (no suprise!). We strung life savers together for a garland, filled clear glass ornaments with M&M’s, each girl got to create their own candy ornament, we made bows and ribbons out of Hershey Chocolates, and more. It was a lot of hard work and took a fair amount of time, but it paid off! Our little tree sold for $400. I’m so proud of the girls and the chance that they had to serve others.

This time of year isn’t about ourselves. It’s the time to get out there and do some good. What traditions do you have in your family or community to serve others this or any other time of the year?