Family Tree Frog

Thomas MacEntee from Geneabloggers writes: What are your memories of your family putting up the Christmas tree? Many of us come from different traditions: some people won’t put up their tree until after Thanksgiving or even on Christmas Eve? Some like live trees and actually go out into the woods to cut their own while others prefer the convenience of an artificial tree. Write about anything related to Christmas trees and your memories of Christmases past. When I was a child, we would buy our Christmas trees from the Scouts Association.  My mother would always insist on the tallest fattest tree my father could find.  Sometimes this meant getting two trees and tying them together.  The tree would be tied to the roof of the car and then, when we got home,  there would be the great exercise of potting it and making sure it would stay upright. Sometimes it would be too big and my father would have to cut some off the bottom. We had three cats when I was ...

Alan from Sepia Saturday says: As a general rule, if you take a daft photograph and then let it soak up eighty years of history it will become even dafter. This is certainly true of this 1930 photograph of the Swan Maiden's Carriage at the Grace Brothers Ball in Sydney, Australia. Grace Brothers were - believe it or not - a famous Department Store, and the strange scene depicted in this photograph (which comes to us by way of the Flickr stream of the Powerhouse Museum) is as strange as anything you might have seen in an episode of "Are You Being Served?". Possible themes for Sepia Saturday 256 include festivals, floats, feathers and fair maidens. Ah Grace Bros....now that brings back memories.  When I was a slip of a gel (hard g), we used to live in Glebe and then I moved to Chippendale to my first share house.  I would walk past Grace Bros just about every day and admire it's cupolas.  Here are some views ... and yesterday...well not yesterday...

The theme for this week's Sepia Saturday is according to Alan:    ‘Boadecea or Mother England’ or possibly Britannia. You can choose; or go with armour, helmets, shields, fancy dress, pantomime, theatricals, warlike women or big sticks".  Ooh plenty to choose from here.  I've been a bit stumped in previous weeks. From an early age I have thoroughly enjoyed dressing up. You might even to get to win a prize - as I did - on board the Oriana  coming home from England at the age of I think 3. Any excuse for a dress up party and the one I remember most fondly was my Witches Party.  I think we were all aged about ten at the time.  Here we are in all our glory.  My parents used to go to such trouble over my birthday parties - decorations, forfeits, the whole shebang.  Unfortunately this photo is damaged but you get the idea. Dress ups continued on in many guises particularly during my illustrious (not) career ...