Newtown Holiday Festival Event—

A Forest Of Decorative Accessories:

The Festival Of Trees Will Return On Sunday

By Shannon Hicks

Layne Lescault and Ann Montgomery have been putting a few more miles than usual on their cars this week. As co-chairmen of The Festival of Trees, one of the events of the annual Family Counseling Center Newtown Holiday Festival, the two ladies have been picking up trees, baskets, wreaths and other decorative items from folks who will not be able to get to the library themselves before Saturday. Local businesses have also chipped in a number of gift certificates.

On Sunday, the public will be welcomed into the Olga Keopkne Memorial Meeting Room of C.H. Booth Library, where more than 50 items will be on view. A Chinese raffle will determine who wins the items. The event – as with most Holiday Festival events – will open at 11 am.

Tickets will be sold at $2 each, three for $5, or eight for $10.

Mrs Lescault said last week that she and Mrs Montgomery had received more than 50 confirmed promises of donations.

“That’s far ahead of where we were last year at this time,” Mrs Lescault said.

Gift certificates and/or baskets have been donated by Church Hill Wine & Spirits (who also donated items for the Holiday Festival Gala’s silent auction Friday evening), Bountiful Board Catering of Bethel (who also donated to the gala’s silent auction), Newtown Color Center, Newtown Florist, and Petal Pushers, among others.

Girl Scout Troops have donated trees, as have Newtown Woman’s Club, Newtown Junior Woman’s Club, Newtown Newcomers, Garden Club of Newtown, Town & Country Garden Club, Fraser-Woods School, and Pop Warner Pee Wee Cheerleaders.

A few families, including the Petroviches and the Ursos, are also continuing a family tradition of decorating and donating. A mother-daughter team, Cindy and Erin Glaberson, has created a tree that might appeal to the younger attendees (or their parents, who may way to take a chance on winning it as a gift): a Pokemon tree.

Colette Williams is represented at the Festival of Trees again this year. Mrs Williams has been donating a decorated tree on behalf of Curtiss & Crandon Real Estate, where she works, for five or six years. She has also been donating items in her own name for longer than that.

This year Mrs Williams has decorated a six-foot tall tree with cardinals, top to bottom. Cardinals have become the signature item for the Curtiss & Crandon trees. The real estate agency, which is the sponsor of The Festival of Trees, has also donated a number of green aprons for the workers at the Festival of Trees this year.

“I decided one year that I wanted birds, and the red looked very good,” Mrs Williams said this week. “The trees have been growing. They started at three- and four-foot tall, but this is certainly the tallest tree I’ve done.”

Mrs Williams plans to donate a wreath and a fresh floral arrangement for Sunday’s raffle.

Trees co-chairman Ann Montgomery also created two items for the raffle. She did a tree with a snowman theme on her own, and worked with friends Renee Baade and Dot Dwyer to decorate a tree with hand-cut garland and snowflakes using Scherenschnitte (German for “scissors cutting”).

Laura Kurtz, who is a co-chairman for the Holiday Festival Arts & Crafts Show, also found time to decorate a paper mache reindeer for the Festival of Trees while juggling the organizational duties of an event that will be running on Sunday at the high school.

The Festival of Trees will close at 4 pm so that the drawings can be held. The names of the winners will be posted and announced as soon as possible. Mrs Lescault expects to have the names posted around 5.

“This year’s drawing will be less chaotic because we’re going to close up the room and pull the winning tickets,” she said. “Calls will be made that afternoon, and we’ll have people ready to match winners to their items.”

Mrs Lescault stressed that items need to be picked up on Sunday, but the good news the library will be accessible until 7 pm. Only the door near the lower meeting room will be unlocked; all other doors into the library will be locked and the alarm will be set for the rest of the building. Winners should plan to park in and enter from the library’s rear parking lot.

Unclaimed items will be donated to local nursing homes.

“We’re asking that people bring their ticket stubs for confirmation,” she said. “You can come to the Festival of Trees and enjoy the end of the Holiday Festival, then come back to see if you’ve won anything. We’ll be there.”

The 18th Annual Holiday Festival will be presented on Sunday, December 7, with most events running from 11 am to 5 pm. Details are outlined elsewhere in this week’s Newtown Bee, including a preview of the popular walking tour on the cover of the Real Estate section.

Admission to festival events is by ticket. Call 364-0597 for details.