Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Make a Surname Christmas Tree

This week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun exercise from Randy Seaver is kind of like doing holiday crafts on the computer.

Come on, everybody, join in, accept the mission, and execute it with precision.

Back in 2013, Leslie Ann had a post on her Ancestors Live Here blog titled Wordless Wednesday — Surname Christmas Tree, which I thought was a great idea for an SNGF challenge on a Surname Saturday.  We last did it in 2014 — see here!  Are you game?

(1) Read Leslie Ann's post and figure out how you could make something similar to hers, or to mine below, or even something different.

(2) Make your Surname Christmas Tree using your ancestral surnames — there's no limit on the number of surnames — and decorate your tree as you wish.

(3) Show us your Surname Christmas Tree and tell us how you made it in a blog post of your own or in a Facebook post.   Please leave a comment here so we can all see your creation.

Here's mine:

This is how I created my tree:

• I'm not particularly creative, so I used Randy's tree as a model.
• I used InDesign to lay it out.  I made a text box and added names to kind of look like a tree.
• I also colored the names green for the tree and brown for the trunk.
• I found a Christmas ornament, some presents, and a star on Pixabay (images that are legally free to reuse!) and added them to the image.
• I exported the file as a JPG and trimmed the image of extra margins in PhotoShop.

I included lots of names from the Jewish side of my family.  Does that make this a combination Christmas tree/Chanukah bush?