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OT- What does your Christmas tree look like?

Ele

(website)

I noticed on another thread that Angie described her tree as "avant-garde" and got to wondering: for those of you who celebrate Christmas, what's your "tree style"? Is it real or ornamental, big or small? What about ornaments- do you like a mix or do you stick to one theme/colour scheme? What about the rest of your house- how do you decorate for the holidays?

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16 replies

Latest reply was from shiny

Ele

(website)

I'll go first

My family always gets a new, real tree every year- usually a Balsam fir. I get the practical appeal of a faux/ornamental tree, but for me, half of what makes Christmas Christmas is the smell of pine in the house!

We have *loads* of ornaments- my Mum is a bit of a hoarder. They range from hundred-year-old heirlooms from my grandparents' childhoods in Germany to fun 1950's stuff from my Mum's, and the hideous ones that my sister and I made when we were little. (We always try to hide these near the back, but my Mum will find them and put them front and centre!) She likes to buy ornaments whenever she's on holiday- at museums, art galleries or markets- so the collection is still growing! We only ever get about 3/4 of them on the tree, but it's not for lack of trying. Our family's decorating motto is "if you can still see green, there aren't enough ornaments!".

When I was younger I rebelled against this and insisted that when I grew up I'd have a "very chic, minimalist" tree, but I take it back now. There is no fighting turning out like your mother- I'm already starting my own ornament collection!

RoseandJoan

Veteran

I love the look of a real Christmas tree but since having the kids practicality had become the main focus. We have a mostly edible tree this year. Teah is potty training and every time she uses the potty (not happened yet at this stage) she may take a treat from the tree. We have red and white candy canes, gold and silver chocolate coins and edible snowmen. I would like to add popcorn chains but fear I would need to replace them every 24hrs.

I hope by the time the twelve days of Christmas are over I will have a very few decorations left to remove (wishful thinking).

Mamapicklejuice

Veteran

I think I've achieved your minimalist chic tree wish, Ele! My (real) tree has only red and silver balls and lights on it, and handmade felt beaded ornaments made by a local artisan. The tree topper is a fabric angel my sister made (she's very talented). I was so thrilled to find these handmade ornaments, and she makes a few new ones each year, so now I've collected Father Christmas, a dove, a Colonial man and a Colonial woman (we live in MA), a deer with a wreath around his neck, a moose, winter hare and a frog with a fancy purple vest. Oh, and another new one this year, a heart. All the ornaments are embellished with beads and beautiful stitches.

My biggest problem with kids and trees is not with the 1 year old, it is with the 4 year old who likes to take all the handmade ornaments off every night and tuck them in the branches to go to sleep. (So I have to rehang them every morning.)

My other main decorations are creches. I have a small pewter one on my daughter's kitchen set, a large one (Willow Tree) on my mantel and a small stained glass nativity on my kitchen window sill. This last one is sentimental as it belonged to my husband's grandmother.

My mother in law makes a beautiful natural wreath for our front door every year, which she delivers at Thanksgiving, and we buy plain wreaths from the local boyscout troup for between the garage doors and the back door.

We have two advent calendars - one counting down to Santa's visit - which I made last year (felt tree and sequined ornaments kept in pockets) - and one I purchased from Etsy.com counting down to the birth of Christ - it features a nativity scene and embroidered figures which you apply with velcro.

I am waiting for cord-free candles to be delivered - I ordered late, but I am still excited to put them up. Then I will consider my decorating complete.

Sarah

(website)

Veteran

We got a douglas fir tree this year, and my style is fairly traditional. All white lights, silver sparkly "garland", although it's more like frosted crystals than garland. I have silver ornaments (my favorite are stick figure looking deer with big antlers), and apple green and orangey red fabric balls. Everything is from Pottery Barn.
I like lots and lots of lights and matching ornaments.
We are thinking of doing a second tree in our master bedroom using ivory and gold only.
I usually decorate more, but this year we're focusing on getting our house ready to sell and it's hard to do so with extra stuff around.

chewyspaghetti

Veteran

Fun thread!
Last year, we had to (yet again) replace the fake pre-lit tree, and we went with a Fiber Optic lighted tree. Our one cat likes to chew on the glass bulbs of the lights, so this way we get the light and kitty and tree are both safe. Since the fiber optics are more expensive, we went with a smaller tree (I think it's about 6 foot with the stand). It actually fits the room size nicely and can be seen through the front window. Smaller tree meant less decoartions, so I limited it to a set of light green/dark green/red balls and a set of snowflakes make from straw. The topper is a star made from all natural materials (seed pods, nuts, twine, etc). I have a wreath on the front made from balls (similar to the ones on the tree), swag lights on the eaves (all white) and then lots of nutcrackers indoors.

Mamapicklejuice

Veteran

ChewyS - I'd love to see a picture of your topper, it sounds lovely. Do you display all your Nutcrackers en masse? Or are they scattered around the house? Either way, it sounds festive.

chewyspaghetti

Veteran

I'll try to take one later for you. I have both- a cluster of nutcrackers on my buffet, and then others scattered throughout the house. I have some 3 inch tall ones, and a 3 foot tall one. I am running out of places to put nutcrackers!

Queen Mum

Veteran

Heres my tree- even though we always buy a fresh tree, it looks the same every year. I just go with the mish mash of ornaments we've collected over the years.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/4.....190762628/
nothing spectacular, but there it is.... I guess I could have put some garland or something on it.....

I couldn't resist posting a close up of this little tree topper that has become one of my most treasured Christmas decorations...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/4.....otostream/

As newlyweds, we didn't have a ton of extra cash laying around, so for our first tree I found this plastic star tree topper at PicNSave for probably 98 cents. I pulled out some gold glitter paint and outlined it and popped it atop our tree. I have looked several times for something nicer, but never can quite bring myself to replace this humble star. So, it has topped our tree for 20 Christmases and will hopefully top our tree for atleast 20 more!

Michelle

(website)

Veteran

Corey and I don't decorate our apartment because we never spend Christmas there; we hightail it back to Mom and Dad's place where the holidays spill into every room. Mom loves all things Christmas and really goes to town. She's quite chic and up-to-date in all ways except this one; Glamorous or garish, everything goes with her. Back when we all still lived in the city, she saved all the elegant decorations like her angel collection and glass nativity scene for the living room and dining room, which was mostly done in green, silver and white. In the family room where the tree stood, however, chaos reigned.Mini-wreaths around lightbulbs, baskets of candy-canes, a big wooden Rudolf that held all the Christmas cards we received, and a big fake tree covered top to bottom in every conceivable decoration. Mom had a very cute tradition every year of buying an ornament each for my brother and myself to start us out with our own collections when we had Christmas trees of our own. That resulted in more than 50 ornaments, plus all the ones she inherited, various balls and lights that I think were white. I've inherited Mom's love of Christmas entirely because of her, and some of my most cherished family memories took place around that over-the-top tree.

P.S. One year she even found toilet paper that said "ho ho ho!"

Angie

(website)

Fashion Stylist

Fun thread, Ele. Great to hear everyone’s approach to their Xmas decorations! Lots of preferences for real trees I see.

Our tree is very unconventional. We have a cone shaped tree that’s about 4 foot high (we live in a small city house). It’s made of molded metal rods with bits of scattered fake tree attached to some of the rods. It’s completely see-through and rests on a circular foot print (no pot). It has small little lights and it’s decorated with international ornaments that we’ve collected from our travels. Most of the presents under the tree are for Rosie and Jasmine.

(I saw our unconventional Xmas tree is a shop window years ago. It was love at first sight. I marched straight into the shop and asked to purchase it. The shop owner said it wasn’t for sale – but everyone has their price!)

I do not decorate the house with Xmas decorations. But I do load up on candles and pop a fake red berry wreath on our bright red door.

shana

Veteran

I like to go to town when it comes to xmas stuff - I brought down my "collection" from the attic the weekend after thanksgiving and realized that I have 8 large plastic totes full! Yikes!

We have a family tradition of going to a local xmas tree farm on the Saturday after thanksgiving to cut down our tree. It usually turns into an afternoon adventure of looking for the right tree (the farm is quite huge so it involves quite a bit of walking), enjoying hot chocolate (sometimes spiked with peppermint schnapps mmm) and cookies and lots of pictures. My husband calls it christmas tree tailgating!

My tree itself is fairly traditional (this year we have a Balsam Fir) - white lights, silver (shiny & matte) & white (shiny, matte & pearlescent) bulbs of assorted sizes, and these beautiful handcrafted crystal "icicles" that I found at a specialty shop many years ago. I also do one additional accent color - most years it's dark red/maroon (with maroon bulbs of various sizes & shapes, tree skirt, stockings etc) but I've been building a collection of assorted blue/teal colored ornaments & accessories too and want to alternate.

I really decorate the whole house - both of my kids have mini (fake) trees in their rooms. My older son decorated his himself and kitschy silver garland and blue ornaments and the baby's is decorated with tiny ceramic baby ornaments - little baby bottles, baby socks, pacifiers etc. The buffet in our dining room features a metal "modern" tree and is cleared off to display all our xmas cards. Our dining room table has a live wreath and our advent candles. Our stairwell is lined with pine garland and other decorations. Anyway, I could go on and on but you get the picture.

Growing up my parents did not do too much decorating for xmas and I guess I have veered in the opposite direction. My mother-in-law is worse than me - she breaks out all her collections of xmas figurines and music boxes in addition to all her decorations. I enjoy the decorating, baking and other traditions of Christmas and it's important to me to make it fun & memorable for my kids. We spend alot of time at home during the holidays and try to just enjoy listening to music, playing games and being together.

Maya

Veteran

I love loading up my tree! Minimalist trees are sooo not my thing. I want garlands! And beads! And glass balls! And blinking lights! Colored lights! THE WORKS!

Most of the ornaments we have are from when my parents first moved here in the 70's. We still have a few that myself and my brother (who is now 30) made when we were really young--in preschool or kindergarten. Setting up the tree is not an issue of aesthetic too me--it's remembering the origins of all our ornaments.

Every time we get a new pet, we get them an ornament too. I got Luce a naughty kitty ornament, and true to her naughty kitty nature, she batted it off the branch and proceeded to whack it all around the house. Took me days to find it under the coffee table.

taylor

Veteran

I love reading these:)

When my children grew up and moved out I gave them all their special ornaments..I saved the macaroni garland, and bulbs with their photos,paper ornaments etc in a box. Everything from school days they made for me.

Now I have 3 trees 3ft, 6ft and 9ft...different rooms of course.I am picky about my shape..I like tall thin trees...so they are fake(couldn't have fake when the kids were home)
They are so pretty, I love to decorate them:)
my big tree is bronze and burgandy
medium tree is green and red
small is bronze and gold
I don't do much else because I think the trees are enough:)

mummy2thea

I have a real tree, it is so lovely! The smell brings back all the special childhood memories, as my parent always got a real tree. It is around 6 feet maybe a little over. I bought all new decorations last year when we moved to Dubai. It is dressed very simply in black and silvery/gold shades with clear fairy lights. Do we think that that the style of the tree represents the style of the person? True to me, my tree could probably do with something else, but I can't get away from playing it safe!!

chewyspaghetti

Veteran

MPJ- here is a close up of the topper:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/c.....193117692/
it doesn't show much in the picture, but certain parts are gilted gold
Here's the whole tree:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/c.....193117718/
it's kind of dark, but i couldn't figure out how to lighten it.

shiny

Veteran

We have a fake tree. It's rather narrow, because there's not much space for a tree in our house. We used to have a wider fake tree, and would have to rearrange all the furniture to make room for it. This one fits a lot better, but it looks a little sad (like it's anorexic) until we load it up with ornaments...

We have a ton of ornaments. There is no rhyme or reason or "scheme" with them. My mother started me out years ago by giving me a bunch of old ornaments - she wanted to go all decorator with her own tree so she packed up the old ones and distributed them to us kids. I even have a few ornaments that are from my dad's childhood tree. I have to treat them carefully as they are quite fragile.

Every year, we add one new ornament per person. It's a family tradition to go ornament shopping together. So we have ornaments that remind us of past years - whatever we were interested in that year. I also have a lot of homemade ornaments the kids made when they were younger. And ornaments given to us as gifts - one of my favorite presents to receive!

Our tree this year is topped by DD's boyfriend's hat. He is never without his hat. But it recently developed a hole, and he had it replaced, so he gave us the hat with a hole, and we put it on our tree. Because we are silly like that.

Other decorations: when my kids were young, I went through a crafty phase, and would make santa clauses. So I have a bunch of santa clauses we set out each year all around the house. My favorite is a "jogger" Santa, who has a red hoodie and red running tights.

We also have a set of cheesy, inexpensive apple ornaments. You probably know what I'm talking about. These were given to me by my ex-MIL when the kids were very young. The idea was to hang them on the bottom of the tree, where little fingers might want to play. They are cheap and unbreakable and safe for young kids. Every year the kids still want to put these on the tree, near the bottom. This year, we did not - but we did stick them in a pretty bowl. They are quite tacky looking but it's about the sentimental memories more than anything else.