Festival of Trees Decorator's Event 

The Guadalupe Montessori School is thrilled to host the 2016 GMS Festival of Trees, and we are very excited about being right in downtown Silver City at the Old Western Stationers (703 North Bullard). It is the creativity, work and care that you, our tree decorators, put in to making your vision come to life on one of our trees that makes this event so magical!

In addition to the trees, which are the main attraction, we will have a Holiday Pop-up store, bake sales, a gingerbread house event, live music and more! It is a great community event, and a lot of fun to put on. Funds raised at this event go toward our Financial Aid and Tuition Assistance programs, which supports our school's mission: By providing a peaceful and carefully planned learning environment, Guadalupe Montessori School supports children from diverse backgrounds in reaching their highest potential to become life-long learners.

 

The 2016 GMS Festival of Trees will run for two weekends, December 2, 3 & 4, and December 8, 9, 10 & 11. We are excited to collaborate with the Tamal y Mas Fiesta on Saturday, December 3rd, and with the SC Museum's Victorian Christmas on Thursday, December 8th. This year, in addition to a selection of live evergreen trees, we are also arranging to have dried agave stalks available as an option for our decorators. The trees and stalks will be set up at the location, ready for you to decorate! We will do what we can to accomodate specific requests for types of trees, and we appreciate your flexibility and understanding that we may not be able to provide everyone with their first choice of tree.

To make it easier for our decorators, we are planning on having two days for our decorators- Tuesday, November 29th and Wednesday, November 30th from 8am to 8pm on each day. If neither of these days/times works for you, and you still want to make decorations, please let us know! We have volunteers who can decorate the treeif you provide a the decorations ahead of time!

The Guadalupe Montessori School will provide:

• Live trees and agave stalks that are set up and ready to decorate.
• Extension cords that reach your tree.
• A lovely card that identifies you (or your organization) as the tree's decorator, and also includes space to recognize the person/organization who buys the tree.
• Coffee, tea and snacks during the scheduled decorator days.
• Wire that can be used to secure your ornaments to the tree (we don't want your ornaments to "walk away" during the festival, nor do we want them to fall off during transport after the festival).

What each tree decorator needs to provide:

• Everything you need to make your vision come true! Ornaments, lights and a tree skirt are necessary, as well as any garland, tree topper, etc that you desire. (Trees will be from 4-6 feet tall, so 60-80 normal sized ornaments are recommended.) While you may certainly take any of your extra ornaments home with you, these extra ornaments would be gratefully accepted for sale in our Holiday pop-up store.

As was the case last year, we do charge our decorators a participation fee. The fee varies depending on the nature and size of the participating organization. In part, this is to ensure that people who sign up are truly committed, and also helps to defray the cost of putting on this festival, which is our school's biggest annual fundraiser (it is very resource and labor intensive event). If the participation fee causes you or your organization hardship, please communicate with Martha Egnal, the school director (contact information is to the left on this page). We are absolutely willing to make arrangements so that participation in this event is accessible to all who are inspired to do so.

Thank you, again, for considering participation in this community event and fundraiser for the Guadalupe Montessori School. We will be in communication with our registered decorators as the event draws near, and encourage you to call or email with any questions you may have!

Register Now!