Gatlinburg Festival of Trees 2011

Mom and I went to the Gatlinburg Festival of Trees this afternoon/evening.  It's a relatively small event that benefits a local charity.

Santa came down from his display area just so he could take picture with my mom.

I think this was actually my favorite tree/display.  And it was outside of the main display.

I think this Mad Hatter Tea Party with the upside down tree and the tea party next to it was probably my 2nd favorite. It was also the one that I thought my friend Rebecca might like best.

This was the one that I thought my friend Summer might have liked best.

This was my mom's favorite. It looked better in person that it does in this picture. The icicles just shine better in person than in the photo.

This tree has my favorite ornaments and I would say is the most creative, but you can only see why with the up close pics below.

That's right, all the ornaments (and some of garland) were all made of paper, curled up strips of paper.

And another one that just looked neat.

And I think this one was my favorite.


They also had a gingerbread house contest.

This was the winner in the kit category.  It is very impressive.  This one looks like the pictures that come on the kit.  I bought one of these kits last year or the year before.  I evantually gave up on it.  I couldn't get the house to stay together.  This one also makes me fondly remember the year in college where we made gingerbread cookie houses around bases of kleenex boxes.

This was the winner in the youth category.  I think this one was my favorite.  I like the tree that is the Little Debbie snack.

This was the winner in the family category. And this was my mom's favorite of all the entries regardless of category. I would definitely say it is the most creative and fun one.

This was the winner in the professional category.  And while I like it, you can barely tell that they are gingerbread houses.  Although it is rather cool that they re-created some of the iconic buildings from the area.  The one on the right is the Old Mill Restruant, I think.

This light display was at the place where we parked the car. A picture would not capture what makes this display so cool.