Oh Christmas Tree: Define Your Holiday Decorating Style

You want onlookers to say, “Oh, that’s your tree!” rather than “Ew, that’s your tree?” this holiday season.  It takes little effort to lift a finger and place ornaments on a tree, yet it takes a lot of passion to transform a barren evergreen into something extra special.

Whether you live alone in an apartment or a member of larger immediate family, you can use the following ideas to style your tree like no other on the block this holiday season.

Grandma’s Garland

Ask elderly relatives and best friends for their hand-me-down ornaments and sentimental pieces that they’ve kept and stowed away through the years.  December is a time to be with family and friends who cannot always close the distance in time for Christmas.  Therefore, place others’ tokens on your tree, so they’re there in spirit if not in presence.  Grandma’s garland, Aunt Rose’s twinkling lights, and your best friend’s star to go on top makes your tree truly unique.

The Kid’s Crafts

It’s likely that teachers and after school aides will devise activities so children can make their own ornaments.  But, the seasonal pastime translates well into the home, giving you added ornaments to place on the tree.  Let the kids contribute too, serving as artists or ‘consultants,’ helping you choose ornaments from the store and online sites offering personalized Christmas tree ornaments.

Your Favorite Season

Christmas is a great season for celebrating but maybe it is not your favorite.  So, use symbols and colors from other seasons to dress your Christmas tree.  Use bats from Halloween, bunnies from Easter, and hats and horns from New Year’s Eve, and bright and sunny summer colors to style your tree as you wish.

Photo credit: www.ornamentshop.com

Annual Ornaments

Purchase new ornaments each year and accumulate a sleigh full of trinkets.  It’s cheaper than springing for a whole new set of decorations and ornaments each year.  The trick is in the storage; be sure to pack with care and place boxes somewhere dry place where they won’t be damaged or heavy things placed on top.  If you have enough room in storage, don’t even bother undressing the tree; just throw a large protective tarp over top.

Homemade Dressing

Take a lesson from the kids and make your own tree dressings rather than spend money on expensive store-offered items.  Tear old sheets in strips to wrap around the branches and use glue and colored glitter to dress the outside of aluminum cans, sticking them on the end of limbs. 

Pop Theme

Adopt a theme from popular culture and associate your tree with the Kardashians, a political party, or your city’s major league baseball team.  Like adding styles of other seasons to the tree, take advantage of ornaments other than those colored red and green and shaped like Santas and reindeers.  Celebrate the season with an obscure or surprise theme your family and onlookers will truly appreciate.

Outside Aid

It’s cold outside during the winter season.  Invite family and neighborhood friends inside for warm cocoa and some Christmas music.  Host a decorating party.  Invite people over for food and drinks with one catch; they must have their contributory ornament in hand.  The holidays are about togetherness, and to ensure you deck the halls with good people, send them an official invite.

Holiday Hedgerow

What’s better than one colossal Christmas tree?  It’s a number of well-dressed Christmas plants.  Why settle with one tree when you can host seasonal foliage throughout the house.  Impress onlookers with widespread holiday cheer and fresh air of seasonal cheer.  Head to your nearest plant nursery and inquire about indoor plants with limbs strong enough to withhold dressing and ornaments.

Larger Presence

You may want to deemphasize the size of the tree due to limited space, so compensate by wrapping large-sized boxes in colorful Christmas paper.  The federal holiday, taking place on a Thursday and giving workers a day off, is present enough, but present visitors with an eye-full of festive boxes.  Visit your local mail office and purchase oversized cardboard boxes to arrange around the tree and home.

Helen Moser is a hostess and decorator extraordinaire. With a penchant for the holidays, she loves blogging about her tips and tricks to beautiful and fun decor to celebrate special days throughout the year.

Choosing The Perfect Christmas Lights For Your Indoor Christmas Tree

Photo credit: christmaslightsetc.com

Christmas lights complete a Christmas tree. A Christmas tree is not as sparkly and attractive when not adorned with these little colorful or monochromatic themed lights that make it more interesting.

There are plenty of Christmas lights available in the market these days. There are rope lights, bulbs, traditional mini lights, icicle lights and net lights. And with the numerous selections you have, it will be a bit confusing to know which indoor Christmas lights are right for you. Here are tips to help you choose the perfect Christmas lights for your Christmas tree.



Take your Christmas tree’s size and height into consideration

The bigger the tree the more Christmas lights it needs and the bigger the size of the lights must go with it. A Christmas tree that is just below 5 feet will look too crowded when you put big Christmas lights like the bulbs. Choose the traditional of mini lights to complement the size of the tree. And as your tree becomes bigger, the size of the Christmas lights will have to go bigger too.


Know what color motif you want for your Christmas tree

If you have decided to go multi colored with plenty of splashes of color on your ornaments, you may want to tone it down with a monochromatic Christmas lights. A soft and light yellow will be a nice Christmas lights for a multicolored or block-colored theme Christmas tree. The lights will reflect on the shiny ornaments giving your tree the illusion of a multi-color lights.

You can opt for multi colored Christmas lights for white Christmas trees to accentuate the ornaments and bring more color to the tree’s solid color.


Steady lights, twinkly or one that dances with the music

There are plenty of Christmas lights now that dances to the Christmas tunes which plays from the small box attached to the control of the Christmas lights series. You can buy steady lights only or get a series of Christmas lights that twinkles or consider buying state of the art Christmas lights that also plays music while the Christmas lights dances asynchronous with the music.



If you’re unsure of what to choose, you can always refer to ChristmasLightsEtc.com and check out the many type of Christmas lights they have in stock. You can also have an idea by checking various home, and Christmas magazines to help you in your decision and design process.

Girls Talk - Christmas Decoration

It's Thursday again! And why am I excited? Well, I get to talk to my blog sisters! Yehey!

This week's theme is my favorite. It's about Christmas decorations. Although our Christmas 2009 is a bit subdued compared to last year when money abound (hehehehe!!). Every year, I make it a point to change color motif and design for our Christmas tree. Last year it was red and gold combination. This year, my family decided to focus on blue and silver. So, this goes without saying that our tree is decked with blue and silver ornaments. However, the Holiday table pieces are still the same: Santa, Angel and Snowman.

The Trees of Christmas

Christmas brings forth good tidings and warm feelings. Adding more fun to that jovial spirit are the gift-giving, holiday festivities and the decorations.

One of my favorite Christmas decorations are the Christmas Trees. A Christmas Tree adds that special feeling of warmth and coziness to a home. There are a wide variety to choose from pertaining to ones preference. There are real ones, artificial, white and even some made from indigenous materials like corn husks. I have seen some in my home country and they are just lovely!

Artificial Christmas Trees these days are a far cry from what we used to have when I was young. The artificial Christmas Trees we used to put up were so simple. They were made of plastic and the needles were the tinsels. Although I see them as pretty but the leaves were not enough to cover the branch so you could see the mid-section. They were like malnourished Christmas Trees even when they were decked with ornaments. However, there has been a remarkable evolution on the presentation of artificial Christmas Trees in the modern times. You can now get wide-bodied Christmas Trees, slim or narrow-bodied Christmas Trees, realistic evergreen colored ones, White Christmas Trees, decked with real pine cones on the PVC branches, some with clear or colored lights, some even rotates on their stands, two or three-tone green needles, different colored Christmas Trees other than the usual evergreen or white, foldable branches for easy storage, Christmas Trees with frosted needles and very huge Christmas Trees! The choices are plenty. The quality is superb and the presentation these days is almost believable. You cannot make out if they are artificial or not because they look realistic.

So, no matter what your preference is regarding Christmas Trees. I am sure that you will find something that you will love and eagerly take home to decorate.

Oh Christmas Tree

The Christmas air is here, silently announcing the arrival of the holiday season. It is time to put up the Christmas decors and everything related to the Yuletide season.

Winter season here is rather short. One would even barely notice its passing if not for the cold breeze on your face and the longer nights. Last week, we put up our artificial Christmas tree. It is the only one we can have since we live in a very hot and humid region in this part of the globe. It is for that reason that we cannot put up real christmas trees much as our hearts desire it. The trees must be able to survive the climate here in the Middle East so they can carry on until New Year's.

I am really fascinated with live christmas trees. I enjoy seeing Christmas photos sent by our families and friends in the US specially when they are next to their real Christmas trees. I imagine the fresh scent of these trees filling their abode. It must be wonderful!

I am so tempted to get a real one this time and check out the christmas tree delivery service if I have the tree shipped here in the Middle East. I have yet to try it though and see if the live tree will withstand the humid conditions of this country.

Oh well, it is not bad to dream of having a real Christmas tree this time. We may not have a real one now but who knows. Maybe in few years time, we will be celebrating our white Christmas in the US with our very own real Christmas tree.

Clay Art - Christmas Collection Part 2 (B)

Here's the last installment of our clay art project with the Christmas theme. Hope you all enjoyed our work which we did out of "love."

Meet Mr. Frosty and Angel Santa. My daughter made the angel Santa while I made the snowman. She used glitters to give angel Santa the glowing effect.

This is the Christmas stockings I made. Notice the texture? I used my old fish net stockings and pressed it to the clay before baking to create textures for effect.

Well, my daughter made this Christmas pear and she insisted that there is one. *Sigh* I don't want to argue with her on that one...hahaha.

This is her Christmas hearts.

My daughter prepared this Christmas snacks for Santa. She wondered why it was always milk and cookies. So, she made "hot" cocoa with chocolate cookies. That's thinking out of the box!!!

I made this Santa face ornament. Notice the dent on the right eye? I must have poked it too much! Almost gave him a black-eye there...LOL!

I made this Rudolph ornament. I accidentally dropped the sharp shaping tool on his nose so there is a slight chip there.

I also made this Fat Belly Santa ornament. I wondered why it is always Santa's face on the ornaments and so I focused on his ever expanding girth as inspiration. I used some lace to texturize the cloak and the same old stockings for the belt texture.

And this is my daughter's holiday ski!

FROM MY FAMILY TO YOURS, HAVE A MERRY AND BLESSED CHRISTMAS! PLEASE REMEMBER THE REASON FOR THIS SEASON IS "HIM" - CHRIST. LET US PUT BACK CHRIST IN CHRISTMAS...

Clay Art - Christmas Collection Part 2 (A)

Here's the next part of our ingenious clay art project. I am amazed by the ideas that come to my daughter's head. She'd tell me what she wanted to do and direct me on the tips (and I never had a clue she knew all that!) on how to sculpt, roll, mould, texturize and cure the clay before baking our maestro. Well, these are Christmas Ornaments, as inspired by our friend Judith (I still owe her big time for introducing this Sculpey clay to me) of Artsy Clay. You should check her out too because she has amazing collections of original and creative clay art pieces.

Here's Mr. Pingu, the Christmas penguin. This is a 50-50 labor of love between me and my daughter. She shaped the penguin's body and beak while I did the decorations such as the santa hat and the long scarf.

The Christmas Holly made by my daughter.

Keeping warm during the cold, winter holidays with beannie and mittens created by my daughter.

Here's my Christmas Golden Star which I embellished with long beads and a gold star sequin for effect.

The Christmas Duckie (if there is one..LOL!) made by my princess. She used a cookie cutter for this duckie's shape.

Christmas Bauble of my daughter. She created lines against the bauble to create an illusion of "shimmer." I told her to use glitter instead but she insisted doing the linear texture and it came out great!

My Christmas snowflake. I had difficulty creating flakes with intricate design so I just balled up some clay and pressed them against line clays I cut from the batch. I scored some lines on the snowflake's balls to create effect using our sharp clay cutter tool.