Advent Blog Hop - 18th December

 The Advent Blog Hop is always my favourite of the year. Once again it is being hosted by Jo at Serendipitous Stitching. Pop over there to find the doors that lead to the rest of the Advent posts. Jo has assigned me Day 18. Just one week now to the Big Day.

Christmas is my favourite time of the year, and I spend most of my leisure time stitching Christmas projects and/or Christmas gifts. This year I finished my largest Christmas cross stitch, HAED Christmas Dreams. I may be a trifle biased, but I think it is so beautiful!  I'm showing it here because it does have two beautifully decorated Christmas trees, and the topic Jo has given us for this year is our Christmas trees.

Christmas Dreams hangs in my craft room during the year. It should be downstairs now, decorating the house, along with the other 30+ framed Christmas cross stitched projects,  Christmas trees, hundreds of angels, around 1000 Santas, a good number of snow persons, and more Nativities than any one person needs.  They are all still packed away safely in their cupboards, trunks, and boxes.  This year I decided not to decorate for Christmas, as a result of the COVID situation. As I write this, my hometown is a COVID 'hot spot'.  I usually get a lot of Christmas visitors, and most are young children and their parents.  Children are not yet offered COVID vaccination here. I hope by next Christmas the  children will be protected, and the threat of  COVID will be diminished.  I am already planning my 2022 Christmas.

I stitched this L&L  Christmas Tree 15 years ago, but it is still one of my absolute favourites. I do have quite a lot of favourites.

I live in Australia, and here Christmas is a summer event. It is HOT.  Real Christmas trees are available if you really go looking for them, and I do remember having real trees at Christmas when I was a very young child (which is a very long time ago) but  they didn't survive well in the heat, and my family switched to artificial trees when they became available in the 1950s. I have never switched back to real trees, though I do love the look and smell of real Christmas trees. I like vintage items, and a lot of my Christmas items started their life in someone else's house, and came to me after they were discarded by the original owners, including my artificial trees.  Usually I have at least five large Christmas trees  scattered through the house: my 1950s tree decorated with treasures given to me by others; my 1970s tree decorated with dark red and gold ornaments;  two 1980s trees  one decorated with angels, red, and white ornaments, and the other decorated with stitched and beaded ornaments I have made; and my two dowelling hanging trees, one decorated with angels and the other with Santas. I treasure my ornaments, and enjoy getting them out of their boxes, and then packing them away safely after Christmas. I always get a couple of new ones each year to add to my collection. My 1950s tree has a vintage star topper, the 1970 and 1980 trees have angels on top.  The dowelling trees have a Santa or Angel at the top.

I usually spend the month of November cleaning, packing away the regular decor and decorating the house for Christmas, and from December 1 to Christmas Eve I have lots of Christmas visitors. I often start taking down Christmas trees late on Christmas Day, and by New Year's Day I usually have removed all the Christmas items and returned the house to its usual state.

I am indulging myself by putting in a picture of my Angel tree, despite the fact that it is not on display this year.  

And my Santa tree:

This year I have just one decorated tree. It's one of my 1980s trees ( the one that I found in the first place I looked). The decorations that would normally be on that tree are still packed away safely (they could be in any number of storage places), so I have put on the tree the beaded angels and stitched ornaments I had made in the past 2 years, which were conveniently in a box in my craftroom, and some icicle ornaments I had bought at garage sales during the year. I found a vintage angel (another garage sale treasure acquired this year) to pop on the top.

I also have an Advent tree that I made for myself about 25 years ago. I actually made quite a few of these for friends and family members.  The Advent Tree is another one of my favourites.  It is about 60cm (2') tall.  I bought the unpainted craftwood tree shape and the wooden stars. I painted the tree, and painted each star with a Santa on one side, and gold spattered red paint on the other side. Then I hung the stars on tiny gold nails, with the red side showing. Each day in December I turn over one star to show the Santa.  This is my Advent Tree today (18 Santas showing).

I can't finish without showing a photo of my Christmas tree ornaments, just because I love making them. These are the ornaments left in my take-home gift basket. If you would like to go in the draw for one of these  just let me know in a comment, and it would be helpful if you let me know if you'd prefer a heavily beaded or scantily beaded one. I'll do the draw on Christmas Day.

I hope your Christmas is a happy one, and that 2022 brings for all of us a less COVID-effected year.  Special thanks to Jo for being such a great host for GG and all the blog hops during the year. MERRY CHRISTMAS!