Bee-you-tiful Festival of Trees for PCMC

So back from Finland for 9 months, we had missed doing a tree for The Festival of Trees, a fundraiser for our local Children's Hospital, for two years.  It was good to get back in the saddle. 

 Here is the entire set up.  The skirt of the tree was made from half a dozen dollar store tutus.

We decided on a Bee tree theme in June.  We registered the name, Bee You Tiful with the Festival then.  Two months later my son died in an gun accident while camping, and our We Can group chair, Carolyn, kindly agreed to dedicate the tree to him.  At that time we added the 'B' s for 'Ben' to the design.

These are the ornaments our group made in monthly meetings for three months. There were 8 to 12 ladies at the meetings.  I finished up the ornaments the weekend before Festival set up, which is always the Monday after Thanksgiving.

The ornament to the right is my favorite of the group.  Ladies spent a lot of time making these hives out of sculpy clay.

 A larger B, and a large Bee top the tree ...

 Along with the tree, we added a small pie safe, rocking chair and table.  The contents of the pie safe were donated by various people, some items were donated by members of We Can, some came from a customer at the antique mall where I work, some came out of my stock at the antique mall, still others came from friend of mine,  my daughter Becca, a successful realtor in the area, purchased and donated the rug and the Bee Skep in the lower left corner was made by me with my craft group. So much goodness came together to stock the cupboard.  

The hand embroidered dish towel set, and a sampler were hand stitched by Carolyn, our group leader.

 Here are the We Can ladies who were able to come to the set up day.

 I loved the fun the bee wings, I got at the dollar store at Halloween time, added to the tree.  Best bang for our buck.

This is our dedication to Ben.  We miss him so much, but the focus on this tree, where I worked, and sometimes cried over my crafting, really was a healing experience.  We have done 18 trees over the years, this is the third one to be dedicated to someone.  My first was dedicated to my mother in 1999, then in 2013 we dedicated our tree to a member of We Can, who passed away.

Thank  you for joining us in our journey.