A Christmas Tree Dedicated to Tea!

Jana, a dear friend who lives in Georgia, did the writing and photos for today's post for Writing Straight from the Heart, on her tea-oriented Christmas tree!

Thanks so much for sharing, Jana!

My love of tea all started with my little Russian grandmother.  

She was a dedicated tea drinker for as long as I knew her, and she taught me to love tea.  Later in life I began collecting teapots.  In fact, the one and only Susan, creator of the blog you are reading, gave me the very first one of my collection as a wedding gift forty-four years ago.  It resides among all the others in my late mother's bowed glass  cabinet which was given to her by her father.  He paid a whopping $10.00 for it in the 1930s.

After I got married and started buying an arsenal of Christmas decorations I saw a lot of teapot/teacup ornaments in the stores, and they reminded me of my grandmother.  I bought them faithfully every Christmas and even ordered some from catalogs.  

 

At first they were just added to all the other ornaments on the tree.  When I had enough to consider them a collection I decided to dedicate a little tree to them.

 

 

 

The present tree is a 4  1/2 ft. Canadian pine and sits on a lowboy in my dining room.  I dearly loved the tree I had been using until one day there was a crash at lunchtime while my husband and were eating.  

 

Guess what fell over?  Some of the more delicate glass and crystal teapots were in pieces on the floor.  I salvaged what I could and, although some of the teapots survived with broken parts, I still use them artfully disguised to hide the defect.

 

 

I also have this thing for mice.  NOT the real ones and only at Christmas.  Many of the ornaments on the tree have mice in the pots and cups, and whenever I found I new one I bought it.  Now I also have a collection of stuffed Christmas mice.

Several of the teapots are handblown glass from Europe and are very fragile.  The tree is not prelit.  This allows me to use strings of light which are 3 candles clustered together.  This gives a Victorian feel to the tree.

 

 

I fill in with pink and mauve ornaments and other Victorian touches. In the past I have also used dried hydrangeas tucked into the branches as well as baby's breath. 

 

 Is a tree ever really done?