My Dominik Family coat of arms...

This is the banner we picked up perhaps eight or nine years ago at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival.  The banner originally had a purple bottom on it, but I asked my sister Julie, who likes to sew and is VERY good at it, if she would be willing to take a whack at a coat of arms I'd thought up.  I'd done some research on heraldry, and the like, and figured that I'd like something fancy, and pretentious, and...  Well, you get the picture. Or you will, below. Anyway, the castle reminds me a lot of the Cinderella Castle of Walt Disney, and not a real castle (I leave out Neushwanstein (sp?) as Mad Ludwig was when he put that one together.  Beautiful place, but the man was wacko). But I did some thinking about the coat of arms.  My father was the second youngest child in his family to survive - he'd had two brothers die in youth, one from (I think Leukemia at twelve or so, and the other, I'm not sure what the problem was, but he was a few months old). I, on the other hand, am the oldest, and only, male in my family.  So I figured I could grab the mark of the eldest son, right off the top.

Now, down here, I used a couple of things.  I've got a blue background, with a silver bar dexter banded in red.  The Owl signifies plenty of things, mostly wisdom.  The crystal ball is for my use of computers.  My father has requested that I add a pen in the middle to indicate the pen being mightier than the sword, and my family's penchant for (er, addiction to?) writing. And yes, my sister embroidered it all.  It looks much better in person.