My Christmas Tree 2016

Is your Christmas tree up?   I only put my Christmas tree up on December 3rd.  Every year my daughter and I put the tree up whilst listening to Christmas music.  It’s become one of my favourite Christmas traditions.  This year, we decided to drop the gold and just stick to green, white and silver.

Putting Up the Christmas Tree

I have a 7.5 foot pine Christmas tree.  Each individual branch hooks onto a central stem, and you have to fluff out all the branches to achieve a nice full look.  Here’s a quick video showing me and my daughter putting up the tree.

Playing Christmas music and singing is part of the tradition – Mariah Carey “All I want for Christmas is you”, Wham’s “Last Christmas”, Kylie Minogue “Santa Baby”, and Michael Buble and Dean Martin singing the golden oldies.

Decorating the Christmas Tree

After the tree was up, we added the 600 lights.  I weave my lights randomly in and out of the tree.  For more tips read – How to Hang Christmas Tree Lights.

Having a beautiful realistic looking tree is one thing, but it’s the decorations that make the tree.  This  year our decorations are all green, white and silver.

I have gradually collected my decorations over a number of years.  To start with I bought cheap decorations from Big W and Target, then over the years I have bought better quality glass and silver decorations.

It works well to mix up the shape and size of the decorations.  Larger decorations will ‘fill’ the tree better than smaller ones, but you need both.  My new decorations this year were 6 mercury glass clip on birds from Provincial Home Living.

We don’t have a set pattern for putting the decorations on.  We just randomly put them on spacing them apart.  We step back, take a look, and move the decorations around until we are happy.  It’s not stressful.  There’s plenty of singing and laughing.

We also decorate the fireplace mantle to match the tree, and hang the stockings up.

A Look Back at Past Christmas Trees

Over the years, our tree has changed.  The colours, the decorations, and even the tree itself.  It’s an always evolving decoration.  Here’s a look back in time.

2014 – We added some pink to work with the blue and white wallpaper

2012 –  in our old Carindale house.  We had the new good tree but we didn’t have enough decorations to fill it, and we didn’t know how to properly fluff out the branches.

2008 – Our first Christmas living in London and our first real Christmas tree

2005 – Our old Kmart tree back in the day when the very noisy train ran around the bottom of the tree and people actually posted each other Christmas cards.

So whether your tree is looking just the way you imagined, or you are somewhere along the journey to your perfect Christmas tree, remember that it’s the people you share that tree with and memories that are most important.

I'm Kylie, and I love to share practical home decorating and styling tips. I'm a qualified interior designer and self taught crafter and DIY'er. I'm addicted to decorating, and can't walk past a homewares shop without going in for a look. I live in a 1930's Queenslander in Brisbane's inner suburbs which I'm turning into a home one project at a time.