Birch deer & vintage ornament trees

Our little Christmas work shop has been in full swing, I still can't show you my fabric gifts I've been making yet but I can share with you my husband's birch tree creations.
One of our friends is moving into a new home, hubby made her a birch bark basket, I filled it with an Christmas arrangement. The first thing she said was "I love birch trees".  Perfect.

Hubby's also been making birch deer, a cute couple for our porch.

Tucked in the pot are greens, berries, holly branches, beaver chew sticks from the Mississippi and pine cones. This will all stay green until March.

He also made a lot of little deer, I put in the antlers leaving on the berries.

My herd on our piano. While we were making our deer our friends who live on the Mississippi were busy making their own herd,

with copper antlers and cute scarves. He lives on our piano also.

 

We went to visit them last week, Donna has a wonderful collection of vintage ornaments she shared with me. 

From an idea on Pinterest we made ornament trees. You start with a knitting needle and slip the ornaments over the pointy end. (No gluing).  The four largest bulbs make the base for the tree to stand on. Just keep slipping on 4 of the next size smaller bulbs until you fill up the tree. A tree topper finishes it off. The only problem is if a bulb slips out of it's cap its falls off and you have to start over.
This one is mine.

And this is Donna's.

It was so much fun we couldn't stop at one. The next day out we went and bought more ornaments at the antique shops. We had some smaller needles with points at each end, so we made a wooden base to hold one end.

My two trees,

and Donna's.
Thank you Donna for sharing all your bulbs They made it home in one piece, so did Ruddy the reindeer!

My one tree on my coffee table in my living room.

Since I'm on vintage ornaments I wanted to share with you the story behind this tiny little bell from the 40's. My aunt who would be near 100 now gave this bell to her girlfriend when they were little.
She scratched in her initials before giving it.

Years later I met the girlfriend and she passed the bell on to me.
 

Another old family piece from the 30's or 40's is this Christmas tree. It is very light weight and may be made from plaster with glass lite bulbs painted on the inside base to show color. The original base crumbled away years ago, I replaced it with a ceramic one. My elderly 2nd cousin who never married or had children gave it to me when I was very little.