TORRINGTON – Mary Wells and her daughter Sarah Seyfang enjoy Christmas. As a matter of fact, the Guernsey mom and daughter duo begins planning Christmas the day after Christmas. It isn’t the gift they plan so far in advance, it’s the tree the pair spends most of the year brainstorming and designing. Of course, it isn’t just a regular Christmas tree. It’s a Christmas tree made and donated to Gracie’s Promise’s Festival of Trees. 

The crafty pair has been designing Christmas trees since 2016, according to both Wells and Seyfang and every year the team develops a Wyoming-themed Christmas tree.  

“I don’t know what we did the first year. I’m not sure we did a Wyoming theme for the first year, but we decided that would be good because a lot of guys would be more in tune with that,” Wells explained. “Every year we do different ornaments and almost always they’re homemade by us or someone else helps us make the ones we use.”

This year’s beautifully decorated tree is located at Heartland Embroidery on Main Street. It features clay ornaments with a mountain background. Each of the ornaments then has a vinyl clipping of Steamboat, the legendary bucking horse which became the University of Wyoming’s (UW) trademark. 

“Sarah does some pottery, so a lot of years she’ll make something out of pottery like she did this year,” Wells explained. “It may not be 100% pottery, because I think we, to get a clear version of Steamboat, that is cut of a permanent vinyl and then stuck on the actual pottery.”

“I have Pinecone Pottery and Gifts and I do Wyoming pottery,” Seyfang explained. “Mom has Penny’s Bits and Pieces and she was making UW tea towels and all kinds of stuff too. I said, ‘You know what, let’s do a Wyoming tree’. So, we have always done something Wyoming.” 

The tree also comes with a handmade tree skirt featuring Steamboat which was completed by Wells. 

“About that time, they came out with the Wyoming fabric. We have incorporated that for several years,” Wells said.

Gracie’s Promise doesn’t tell the tree donors how much money the trees bring in for the non-profit organization which helps to alleviate the burden of some non-medical expenses for the families of children with cataphoric illnesses. However, according to Mary Houser, member of the organization, the Wyoming tree is one of the higher bid collectors during the festival. 

“I have no idea how much the trees are sold for every year,” Wells said. “Mary does not say, and we don’t come to Torrington to find out but she does say they do bring in a good amount for Gracie’s Promise.”

“Trees done year after year by Sarah and her mother, Penny Wells, have always been in the popularity spotlight; they always have high bids,” Houser said.

Although Wells couldn’t recall how they became involved in the festival, both speculate it had something to do with their love for “rustic” crafts and possibly attending a craft fair where they met Houser. 

“The organization, I don’t know how we got involved in this. Maybe Mary might have run into Sarah at one of the craft shows or something because we used to do the craft show in the winter at the rendezvous center in the fall,” Wells explained. 

“We used to do the Lions Club bazaar and they always had a booth there and they would advertise for their tree festival,” Seyfang explained. “One year we just said, ‘Hey, we’d like to do a tree, what can we do?’”

This year, trees are available for bids and on display at 21st and Main, the Town Market, Pinnacle Bank, First American Title, Heartland Embroidery, Century Lumber, Burger King, This N’ That, The Flower Shop and Destry’s Secret Garden. Wells explained the festival had used the bank lobby for the display some years prior. 

“The first couple of years, we did it over at the bank, set the trees up there. This is a good way to get people into businesses, I think and Heartland [Embroidery] works really well because they do so much Wyoming embroidery and things like that,” Wells said.

“I think this is the third year we have done it over at Heartland Embroidery and we do a really tall, skinny tree, because there is not much room there,” Well said. “It’s also real conducive for people if they want to bid on it to put it in an office or leave it set up year-round someplace. It doesn’t take up a lot of room.”

The duo begins planning the next tree for the festival as soon as they finish the current one.

“As soon as Christmas is over, we start looking to see if we can get that slim pencil tree somewhere,” Wells explained. “We try to get everything if we can, on sale, for the next year. Sarah already has pretty much a design in mind for the next year’s ornaments.”

Gracie’s Promise was founded by the late Bud Watson, a Torrington resident, who watched the struggles of his own children when their child was diagnosed with childhood cancer. For the last 15 years, Gracie’s has helped a number of children and families with expenses like buying gas to travel to appointments, paying for a hotel room when families have to travel for medical care and anything else medical insurance doesn’t help with, the non-profit explained.

“With Gracie’s, we have people that have, may not benefit directly from Gracie’s, but could have at one point in time,” Wells explained. “I think everyone knows someone in their life that’s had cancer treatments or whatever. My daughter-in-law ended up with a heart transplant. It would have been 2018 or ’19 in Denver. So, we’re very in tune to people that might need some of those benefits.”

Gracie’s Promise has been received with open arms in Goshen County and the surrounding area, according to Wells. Wells explained the program may not have been as successful as it has been if the location was anywhere other than Torrington and she attributes some of those successes to Houser. 

“You have Mary heading that up which makes a difference too because she is a very personable person,” Wells explained. “Over the years, Mary’s so great, she always so good about telling us the story as to where the tree goes. One year, she said it went to Jackson and people keep it up there in a cabin. It’s up year-round.”

Seyfang has also jump bumped into the tree she and her mother designed and built in local stores too.

“We had come out of Leithhead’s and I looked up and was like, ‘Oh, they must have bought the tree,’ because it’s in the window this year,” Seyfang recalled.

“We always thought Gracie’s Promise was such an important thing in the community with everything that they do,” Seyfang said. “My husband had gone through some health issues 15 years ago, so we knew what strain that put on us with him being sick, let alone if it would have been one of our children. We always thought it was a great opportunity to give back.”

“We view it as an honor to give back to it,” Seyfang said. 

This year’s tree comes with a different piece of Seyfang’s pottery and Well’s Steamboat tree skirt and it can be seen at Heartland Embroidery. Bidding for Gracie’s Promise Annual Festival of Trees will end Friday, December 6 at 6 p.m. or the respective closing times of the display businesses.