My Heirloom Tree

     Hi everyone, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas! I took the last week off from work, blogging and the internet to spend time with my girls. Today is their last day home and I can already feel the sadness creeping in on me. I LOVE having my girls home and spending time with them. I probably won't see them again till May, so my heart is heavy. 
     I hope you don't mind, since I took this time off, I have a few more pictures of Christmas to show you. This is my heirloom Christmas Tree. She has the place of honor in the Living Room and stands nine foot tall. Every year I try to re-create the Christmas tree of my childhood, that means colored lights, lots of ornaments and lots of tinsel. 

     Can you believe I forgot to take picture Christmas morning with all the presents underneath?! The train is usually not under this tree. It is usually under my white tree in the sunroom but I moved it here for my little Nephew  Monday night.
     My parents gave each of us an ornament for Christmas long before it was popular and so I have been collecting ornaments for over 45 years. They also gave each of my girls an ornament from the time they were born. A few years before they passed away, my parents blessed me with a number of the vintage ornaments that were on their first trees, some of them are over 60 years old. Here are a few of my favorite vintage ornaments from my parents. 

 

I've also given each of my girls an ornament every year, usually representing a special event in their life that has happened over the past year. 
To commemorate Rachel's first year at college,

A new ornament this year to commemorate Emily's trip to china,

Tiny Wooden shoes to commemorate our trip to Holland in 2001,

I have three large plastic storage boxes filled with nothing but ornaments and every nook and cranny of this tree has an ornament. I have a few Christopher Radkos which are very special to me, here are two. I had to get this Border Collie because it reminded me so much of my sweet Chipper when he was a puppy. He always had one ear up, one ear down,

And this elf was a gift from my sister,

Every year the last ornament to be placed on the tree is this small framed picture of my Mom and Dad.

The first Christmas after they passed away, we put the tree up and everyone went to bed except me. I turned off all the lights and turned on the tree, held a picture of my mom and dad and sat there in the dark and cried my eyes out remembering how they made every Christmas so, so special and I wished they could be there to see this tree, decorated with all of the ornaments they gave us. Something came over me and I walked over to the tree and nestled the frame among the branches, to me, it was as if they were a part of our Christmas. A few years later I decided to make a real ornament to replace the framed picture and this is what I came up with.Thanks for reading about my special tree today. I'll be linking this post to
REDnesday at It's a Very Cherry World
and 
Vintage Thingie Thursday at Colorado Lady