Christmas Tree Festival

We finally managed to get our decorated tree down to the church in Bilton last weekend - it was very last minute but our tree is now up with the others in the display at St Peter's Church. I say our tree, mainly because Keith and I were the ones who decorated it on behalf of our group - Bilton Amateur Dramatic Society.

This is the first year the Church have held a Christmas Tree Festival  - and I was pleasantly surprised to see that the majority of the entries had managed to get there considering the atrocious weather we've been having recently! It was touch and go whether we would even get off our drive-way onto our cul de sac to begin with, and that was after a lot of digging up of snow too!

We were asked to decorate the tree based on the theme of our organisation - so we built the base for the tree to stand on as a miniature stage, setting the scene with a 4 poster bed (made out of some mount-board and wooden dowelling) and chair to represent Scrooge's bedroom from "A Christmas Carol". Keith made the bed, I then painted and made the mattress, pillow and bed cover for it, and decorated it with a fringed valance and top piece. I made some red velvet stage curtains and used an old mini cross-stitch frame to create a "painting" on the back wall.

We then made some cardboard cut out figures (we didn't manage to get 3D figures in time - again due to the snow restricting us) to represent Scrooge and the ghost of Jacob Marley.

Keith mad some fimo tree hangings in the shape of various props - a goblet, a bowler hat, a sombrero, a book and a champagne bottle. I then painted them all and attached coloured string to hang them onto the tree with. We made some triangular paper bunting in alternating colours of red, green and white with the BADS logo written on each side - this covered the tree from top to bottom and served as our version of "tinsel". I made some 2D "baubles" using images from previous posters for plays, and several mini posters were used as little decorations too. We even managed to make a few miniature play copies. Now that we've decorated it, we are thinking of more ideas for next year!

We added an "Oscar" style trophy to the display at the side - we usually hand these out at our annual Junior & Youth "Oscars Night" and this particular one was a reject we had in.  We will be holding our Oscars Night on Wednesday 22nd December, weather permitting! It was originally planned for 15th (my birthday, coincidentally) but since we've had to miss two weeks of rehearsals, it's been postponed.

Here are some images of our tree at the church. The church is lovely and warm - thanks to the central heating they have installed there.

The Tree in position on the window sill

Close up view of the stage area

Close up of some of the decorations

Our "Dressing Room" styled star!

Other groups taking part are: Bilton Primary School, Bilton Brownies, St. Peter's Fund-raising team, St Peter's Music Group, St Peter's Pop In Group, St Peter's PCC (sorry, no idea what that stands for!!!), The Royal British Legion, Stay and Play, St Peter's Walking Group, The Woodwork Group and Mrs Jean Walker ( a resident of Bilton).

We managed to take a few photographs of some of the other trees, too. Where possible, I have included the name of the group taking part - at the bottom of the photograph.

Bilton Primary School

Bilton Brownies

St Peter's Music Group

St Peter's Pop In Group

I loved the way the Pop In members have decorated tea bags for the tree, and if you look closely you can see several different musical instruments on the tree from the Music Group.

St Peter's Walking Group

The Woodwork Group

The detail was fantastic in these hand carved decorations from the woodwork group:

Mrs Jean Walker

We visited the Christmas Tree Festival this afternoon, after which we popped along to see the rather larger display at All Saints Church in Preston, our village. I will be doing a separate post about that one, however! Too many images in one post, I think.

St Peter's Church has a web-site - at www.stpetersbilton.co.uk listing all the different events that take place there - it seems to be a thriving part of the community. The Christmas Tree display was originally only going to last until this afternoon, but I think it will now stay until Christmas, so presumably whenever the Church is open, the trees are available for viewing.