Christmas is a vital thing for me. In USSR all of the Christmas traditions were shifted to New Year, including the tree and the gifts, and for me it was also close to my birthday. Life in Russia at that time was pretty bleak, but New Year with the tree and the shining ornaments and tinsel and gifts and a big dinner, well, it was magic.
Last year we didn’t get to have a live Christmas tree. We moved the day before Christmas, and there was no live tree to be had. We bought a plastic tree so we would have something up on Christmas.
It about killed me. First, it’s not real. Second, plastic trees are harmful to the environment. While I don’t judge anyone for their choice of tree, real trees grow for several years on a farm, providing all of the benefits to the world that a tree does and at the end they are biodegradable and return back to nature. Plastic, not so much. But anyway, long story short, plastic tree.
This year I got terribly excited about the tree buying. Like really excited. And then Kid 2 came by and said, “You know, we have tall ceilings now and space. We can get a large tree.”
So I called down to New Braunfels Christmas tree lot and talked to a lovely lady named Carol, who told me that they would deliver our tree if we picked one out but larger trees were going fast. I made shiny eyes at Gordon, who dropped what he was doing, and we went to New Braunfels.
Yeah. So this happened.
I may have shot us in the foot here, because despite the fresh cut, commercial mount, and being stored in water at the lot, this noble fur isn’t taking in water. I hope it doesn’t dry out, because everything I’ve read says that drilling holes in the trunk won’t help and making another fresh cut won’t is out of the question. It took four of us to out it up. It still looks pretty fresh, so we’ll see.
Now we have to decorate it and I am reasonably sure that we do not have enough of anything. I will need to buy light and decorations, and that brings about all sorts of questions. Do we do a hodgepodge of multicolored decorations or do we pick a few colors and have some sort of scheme going? Traditional or weird?
Do we buy large ornaments or lots of small ones? Where is a good place for buying large ornaments? Shatterproof of glass? Opinions wanted!
I was in Joann’s yesterday and a young woman behind me in line shared that it is her first Christmas in her own place and she was envying her mothers multitude of decorations. I assured her we all start small and build our collection over the years and just one or two items that make her happy was all she needs to get started this year. Brought back great memories of my first Christmas in my first place.
I use plastic tree. Less charm but considering my cat and Christmas tree experience, it’s much safer for adventurous cat paws. Use tinsel with caution. Place the least favorite items, preferably resistant to paw punches and falls, on the lower parts, place the other ornaments higher. Keep the phone nearby for snapping pictures of the ball of fur testing your strategic placement of ornaments.
I chose to decorate my tree with animals, I add some more every year. From what I have seen in magazines, on large trees it’s better to choose a few ornaments and multiply them in a pattern all over the tree.
I love to make new ornaments each year with family and friends to add to the tree. We try to squeeze in an afternoon or evening somewhere for ornament-making–super fun for a group, especially if it includes festive beverages and cookies! One year applesauce cinnamon ornaments (they make the tree smell amazing!), another year wood burned snowflake and star designs on wood slices strung with ribbon, another year paper Polish Star ornaments…so many possibilities! That’s a gloriously huge tree to decorate, and you’re super busy people, but if you have a bit of time to make some, I can say one of the things I love most when looking at my tree is reflecting on the joyful memories each year’s ornaments bring to mind!
Hodgepodge of ornaments is always nice – especially if you have a bunch from years past that have sentimental meaning. I personally love seeing white lights which will make all the colors of each of the ornaments just pop, and if I put up garland or tinsel it is very lightly…. A couple of times I have taken a 3 foot tree and used blue or teal lights and just hung my Star Trek, Star Wars and lighthouse ornaments on it with no tinsel and just the skinny springy garland. In my childhood the trees had multi-color lights and a hodgepodge of sentimental ornaments mixed with reflective glass ornaments, then tinsel was distributed fairly evenly (when Mom did the tinsel you could still see the ornaments, when we kids did it, not so much). But to me, the Christmas tree is still all about the memories and stories about the different ornaments as the family put them up on the tree – we had an ornament my great-great-grandparents brought over from Germany when they came to the US, several ornaments my grandparents had had on their trees when my mom was a kid, ornaments my dad’s mom made each of us grandkids as we were growing up, as well as ornaments we kids made for the tree as we were growing up. But I still think white lights would have accented all those ornaments better as we were growing up which is why I use white lights now as an adult.
Local tree grower says you need to have the tree able to pull water into it’s “vadcular” system. Hence cutting off the bottom before you stand it up. You want to get rid of the dried up part as it’s closed off to bringing in new water. Needs to be continuously wet to avoid closing the system down. A little bit of bleach in the water will prevent bacteria from growing and clogging up the base of the tree, blocking it’sability to suck up water. A little bit of sugar will give it a bit of energy. Breaks in water availability cause the needles to fall. Once that starts, it’s pretty hard to stop. I know florists who do the same for flowers on a smaller scale. Some use asprin instead of bleach.
Pattern shmattern!! Fling it all on is my motto! Home made, kid made, random stuff said kid has picked in random Christmas shops – the ‘angel’ on the top of our tree is a photo of my brother in law wearing his Christmas jumper…. No idea why!
The one nod to any sort of theme is that it has to be Christmas colours so red, green gold.
If you like it, do it I say!!
Honestly, just go all out fun! At my house we have bits and pieces of ornament sets, ones we made as children, pieces of collections that never quite happened fully, and just random ones we like a lot. For me, a happy tree is one that looks like the family is on it, that looks well loved with a hodgepodge of things. I know you need to get new for the massiveness that is your tree, but get ones that call to you, not just because they match.
There is an additive called prolong for Christmas trees that really helps. Also if they didn’t do a fresh cut on the bottom they dont last as long or take as much water. Myfamily collects ornaments when traveling and adds to the tree each year. Good luck
Years ago we had a cat that loved all things shiny. My daughter wanted glass ornaments and she bought quite a few. The cat would climb up the center of the tree and bat at the ornament of her (currant) choice until we either got her out of the tree or she knocked it to the floor and had a lot more shiny pieces.
Decorate your tree however you want, if it makes you happy that’s what is important. May you and your family enjoy your time together for the holidays.
Have a Merry Christmas Ilona.
I have to have fake.. sigh. Due to allergies but I have found shatter proof ornament at craft stores such as Micheals and Hobby Lobby. I also have some homemade ones and of course lights , ribbons and stems from the craft stores. Your tree looks lovely. Enjoy your new space!
Suggestion?Heaven forbid you need it this year, but definitely for those years to come:
TREE FARMS.
Do some research, find the closest. Worth the original agro to get a fresh tree that lasts the entire holiday season.
OR, for those more successful author-lords such as yourselves, big, live tree.?
Wow, a beautiful tree! Please post a picture with the decoration, if I may be so bold, I am sure it will look incredible since the tree itself already is!
For decorations in our family we mix it all up since the pieces have been assembled over the years. For my smaller trees I usually stick to a few colours from the collection of Weihnachtsbaumkugeln (glass) and add my collection of ornaments like santa-on-the-space-shuttle.
If you don’t want to have too much colour, here there are boxes of colour-coordinated spheres which you could add, so there’s variation but not too much? Hope they have something similar in the shops close to your home.
Anyway enjoy the tree, and have a great time decorating it!
Wishing you a nice and quiet weekend to start into the festive season.
Before we fostered cats we bought 1 unusual ornament for every year we were together. Since cats only see a jungle gym when they look at a Xmas tree, however, gardening back to the days when we did have a tree, my vote is for all different types with soft ones on the bottom for the cats.
I swear that I wrote harkening not gardening. #$@*’-&**# autocorrect.
My family does large trees, usually 15 to 25 feet tall. [When we lived in a tiny apartment, my dad just cut off the top half and the back 3/4 of the tree. With the trunk wedged into the corner, there was barely enough space to walk through the door.]
Here are some considerations specific to large trees.
* Fasten it to something so that it can’t tip over. The standard bases may not be enough. My husband puts screw eyes in the wall studs and runs wire from the tree trunk to the screw eyes. Sometimes he’ll put a stick in there too, to prevent the tree from falling against the wall. Mostly you don’t want it falling on people.
* Decorate the top first. Trees are triangular. The taller the tree, the more you have to shove the ladder into the lower branches in order to reach the top. That’s easier if you haven’t put ornaments on the lower branches yet.
* Pad the floor below. 100-year-old mercury-glass ornaments can survive falling from the top of a 15-foot tree, if the floor is padded with old blankets.
* The bigger the tree, the bigger the ornaments. When you look at the tree as a whole, you’ll be looking at it from further away. Having a half-a-dozen, or more, large ornaments gives you something to look at from that distance. With your size tree, the biggest ornaments might be 8″ to 10″ diameter.
For large ornaments on a sheared tree, think of something light-weight and relatively flat. Poinsettias, bows, snowflakes, garland, giant lolly pops, portraits of your family members,… I can’t recommend large (8″+) balls on a sheared tree.
I’ve found that if you buy red garland and a number of red balls, then the tree looks pulled together even if rest of the ornaments are mish mash. White lights and lots of thin red ribbon tied into small bows and thrown on the tree randomly helps but isn’t required. The thin ribbon trick was taught me many years ago and is amazing how good it looks for such a simple thing.
I like a more traditional coordinated look. We have gold, silver, white, and red. For ornaments I bought several sets of shatterproof from Target. For some of the bigger more outlandish stuff, which this tree can pull off, I say at home.
Your ? is so big!
guess I am a fan of all white lights and one hued Garland with a Mish mash of ornaments. I usually get another ornament whenever on a trip – it’s one way to build up a collection