For years we've gone with just lights and balls. May have more to do with laziness than classiness, but it works for us.
That might be all I do this year.:smile:
I'm thinking it could be something we do together when guests come. I think I would prefer twinkle lights over these giant oversized ones, though, so I might pick those up. That, and some ribbon at least. :biggrin1:
My cousins have gone for ribbons all over, one aunt does fake poinsettas and other flowers in her tree with doves and bird nests, another one likes lots of those bead garlands! There's so many choices of where I could begin, I feel overwhelmed!
That's a neat thing! according to it, if I get a 6' tree that is 3' wide, then I don't need to buy much more for the tree at all. I may end up doing that for this year, if I run out of time.
I didn't have a sense of scale at all before, whether I needed more or less ornaments or how big of a tree I should get for the number of ornaments I have. That provides a roundabout guideline for me. Thank you!
Have a Merry Christmas Petite!
Thank you, OMG! :smile:
In my opinion, a Christmas tree is a personal piece of art.
Mine is decorated with kids ornaments, homemade ornaments, a couple of Wal-Mart specials to remember the earlier years, ornamations, tinsel and LED Lights.
Although it "looks" tacky by public standards, everything has meaning to us.
For GOD SAKE, do not conform!!:biggrin1:
I'd love to have all that stuff, but I don't. My son isn't even born yet and all my homemade ornaments are on my father's tree. My dad's tree is covered in ornaments I made throughout my childhood, from clay that I painted, and paper, and styrofoam and glitter, and ornaments that he made, too, carved wooden ones and painted wooden ones and stained glass ones. I love it. I certainly hope they'll remain on his tree for many more years. :smile:
I just need my own starter set for my first Christmas that I'm hosting, until I have my own sentimental things to put on my own tree. :smile:
I did the calculations for my tree ( 7' high and 4.6 feet wide), and by those calculations, it would look like the Vegas strip. 186 ornaments and 213' of strings of light.
Some people love lots of lights! My grandparent's tree is usually overladen with lights and ornaments, but they've had a very long time to collect all that stuff.
My tip is....do what makes YOU happy! Have a happy holiday!
Thank you, Tray! You have a happy holiday, too!
One hundred of anything sounds like too many to me. But then I have never had a tree in a house with a ceiling higher than eight feet.
If you have not inherited anything in particular from family members (who have given us more than we could possibly use over the years) and don't like multicolored riots (which we do), then how about baking a big batch of holiday cookies with a small hole poked in one end, that you can frost and decorate and string with twisty ties, for a personal touch? Just be sure to hang them too high for pets and toddlers to pull down, if you have those.
We always get a lot of photogenic moments from letting our pet doves sit in the Christmas tree, so it's got no edible ornaments and no breakable ones, either.
Tips: Put the lights in first. Then the garland, then any extra tinsel or flocking spray, individual ornaments last. Take many days to put them in exactly the right spots if you want unique ones to really show.
All of our sentimental ornaments are on my parents or grandparent's trees, which is where I've spent all previous Christmases. This is my first year ever hosting Christmas, so there's never been any point in having a tree before. I've always spent that holiday with my family before now, so I bought one big box of ornaments, an assortment of 100. It didn't seem like a lot when I bought it since the box isn't even half the volume of my parents and grandparent's collections that they put on their trees. Of course, they always get really big trees, especially my grandparents!
I saw a tree covered in gingerbread cookies on Martha Stewart's website. It looked neat, but I don't think I have the time this year to bake and decorate so many of my own decorations. I would have to cheat and buy cookies that I attached to my tree. Plus, I do have a hound that would cause problems where cookies are concerned. :lmao:
I don't think there should be any rules about decorating a tree it should be suited to your whims. However I follow these guidelines for myself. I light the tree first from the inside out and from the top down. I hang really large ornaments on the inside branches, I hang smaller ornaments on the top and graduate larger as I go down. I also stuck with a two color theme as I have added ornaments each year. When you hang a few things step back and see if it suits what your final statement is.
This is last years tree!
Oh, I agree about how there shouldn't be any rules. I just don't know where to begin with buying for my first tree since I'm just starting off my own collection of Christmas decorations this year. :smile:
Your tree is beautiful!
My preference is for colorful and fun trees...with white lights as a complement to colored lights. My favorite ornaments are the antique ones my mom collected years ago when she lived in Europe...they are fragile glass shapes and characters that reflect the light. Tinsel is a distraction, in my opinion, but I used to love it and would throw buckets of it onto the tree. I was never much a fan of limited color schemes...though I understand that's de rigueur for many.
Well, it's just one box of ornaments, so they all match in color. I wasn't sure what to add to it yet. It's my first year having a tree. It's my first year hosting a Christmas morning, too. First Christmas for TheBaby. :biggrin1:
I'd love to have antique glass ornaments, but we're trying to go thrifty this year. I'm spending a fortune on cloth baby books, baby toys, baby furniture, baby strollers, baby clothes, baby this and baby that. I want Christmas to feel like Christmas, so we have a place to put the presents, but not to be too expensive this year.
I hadn't thought of multicolored lights at all. It seems like a long time since I've seen a strand of those, not since I was a kid!
I'm sure that we will! I hope you do, too. :smile:
My tree is artificial, it has one colour tinsel (purple), has a lengthy string of multi-coloured LEDs, has lots of silver baubles and glass ornaments (stars, icicles and angels), it has silver beading and just a very few purple glittered baubles to compliment the colour theme and tinsel. It has a silver mesh star on top. It looks good enough for me and looks awesome with the lights on.
I couldn't care less what anyone else thought of it, my tree, decorated by me and for me.
So don't worry about convention, just have fun!
I've never heard of purple tinsel. I didn't realize it came in colors other than silver. I don't think that's common in the US. I found an artificial tree in the attic. We could always fall back on that. There's also a cedar tree in the back yard I could cut down with my chainsaw, even though TheBF says he doesn't want me using it while I'm pregnant. Maybe he could cut it down for me.
Yikes, Miss P, you've never decorated a tree before? Well, ditto. I stuck mine up on Saturday, & despite having been given turquoise, purple & something vaguely like terracotta tinsel to go with red, blue & green baubles - it's surprisingly come out well, & not at all vulgar. It took One hour for the whole room.
Why anyone would not want red,gold, & silver tinsel is beyond me, & your colour scheme sounds quite tasteful.
Everything I had left over - mainly all those baubles - I managed to stick around the fireplace, mantlepiece & mirrors accompanied by red & white beads.
I also got some lighted fake silver birch sticks, & a red, white & dark berry branch.
If you've got a big tree, you'll need more, but don't forget that if it's in a corner, there's no point in decorating the back! You'll know if it's OK. Just don't sweat it. Less is always more to start with.
I've managed to grow a holly bush too in the last 3 years, but have no idea what to do with the holly, especially as it seems reluctant to yield any berries.
I've helped decorate my parents and grandparents trees before, but this is my first year I'm getting my own tree, and trying to figure out where I want to begin my own Christmas decoration collection is where I'm at right now. I thought that red and gold would look very pretty against a green tree, so that's why I bought the big box of red and gold and red/gold globes, but then I was sort of stumped what to do next?
