Trees of treasures; Decorations in Barre home have special meaning.

Byline: Laura Porter

Last year, on a low table by the window in Shirley Smith's dining room, the ancestor tree held small, framed photographs of the generations, each one tied to a branch with a slender red ribbon.

In the kitchen, miniature frying pans, Fiesta coffee cups, and cookie cutters dangled from the branches of another Christmas tree.

At the bottom of the front staircase, rhinestone pins and necklaces, strings of pearls and white feathers covered an angel-topped tree, while upstairs, in a 50s-style family room, a vintage tree in silver aluminum sparkled with colored lights.

And those were only a few of the trees that filled the house in Barre.

Every year from Thanksgiving until January, Mrs. Smith, who has always loved Christmas, uses the backdrop of her 115-year-old farmhouse to showcase her holiday treasures, both new and old. From classic antique ornaments to Santas made of pipe cleaners, she is able to craft Christmas from virtually any material.

"I have a lot of decorations," she says, "but I don't always do the trees."

All year, she hunts and gathers, picking up odds and ends from craft stores and yard sales, holiday bazaars and, sometimes, her own attic.

"I never stop looking for decorations," she says. "It's a disease! I buy a lot of things after Christmas when they're on sale. Some things we've had for years."

At the top of the front staircase, a huge golden papier-mache reindeer she found on sale dances across the top of an antique Empire-style wooden bureau. In the living room, her collection of furry Christmas figures made by Monson artist Lewis Garland stand out, reindeers and cats dressed in the finery of the season.

And then there are all those trees.

Six years ago at Christmas, she decorated nine of them. In 2010, by the end of November, she had already put up the main tree, flocked green and tucked into a corner of the living room. Following a woodsy theme, she had decorated it with tiny ice skates, birdhouses and elves with pinecones, adding sprays of honesty, or silver dollars, for shimmer.

She thought she was finished for the holidays until her sister took her to see a house in Worcester "where the decorations are over the top."

The tour spurred her on.

"I was so excited that I decided to do more of my trees," she says. She ended up decorating 14 trees in all throughout the two-and-a-half-story home.

She and her husband, Wayne Smith, have lived here since they married in 1986, but the house has always been owned...