Christmas Decorating

Back in the olden days, I had a vision of having a Christmas tree in every room of the house. My idea was that I'd have one large/main tree then several smaller ones with different themes each year. Since I have a December birthday, I have accumulated a lot of Christmas ornaments so I have enough to mix and match easily. 

I have never succeeded in having a tree in every single room but I have five trees in various sizes, most of which I've had for years. It takes a fair amount of room to store them but I think we all enjoy them when they're up! In this post, I will share pictures of a couple of trees, with more to come in another post.

We replaced our main tree seven years ago with a pre-lit 9-foot tree. I love the "mixed" branches and the fact that we didn't have to mess with lights! Unfortunately this year as we plugged it in to check the lights, we smelled a hot/burning plastic scent. NOT GOOD! Upon close inspection, this is what we found! The plastic housing was melted completely through and even smoking in two different areas. YIKES!

I'm so thankful that this happened right away...and not when we were away from home with the tree lit! The lesson is this: If you have a pre-lit tree, unplug it when you leave home!

Now when the lights on a pre-lit tree fail, I think the assumption is that you'll throw it out and buy another tree. The pre-lit lights are so tightly and intricately wound that they're somewhat intimidating to remove, but that's what I decided to do. I love the tree too much to just toss it, and that seems really wasteful. After a few hours, I had all the lights off so we could re-string it with regular lights. Now it's as good (almost) as new. 

I will say that it took a LOT of fluffing to make the branches look full again, as the old lights were so tightly wound!

 

 Speaking of fluffing, did you know there is a proper way to fluff the branches of an artificial tree? I actually ran across a blog post or video somewhere which gave some helpful tips. I used those tips when fluffing our big tree above.

Here's a quick "tutorial" using branches from our very old kitchen tree. If you have the kind of tree that has branches like this, it's easiest to fluff them before putting the tree together. If the branches of your tree are not removable, you can still fluff them in the same manner. Just start at the bottom of the tree and work your way around and up, branch by branch.

Start at the back of the branch, closest to the hook. Pull those back pieces straight up and fan them out like a peacock tail. This will help conceal the trunk of the tree. Once that's done, pull the remaining pieces out to the side and up, staggering them.

 You can see how nice and full the branches are once this is done!

 Now you can go ahead and assemble your tree. Of course, you'll have to do a bit more fluffing once the branches are all in place. This tree is very old but I really love the blue-green color so I hope to keep it for a long time. Proper fluffing makes a big difference!😃

 This year, I got out a set of decorations by Cosmo Cricket I made in a class I taught years ago at Memory Bound. The papers have a blue-green base which makes the ornaments prefect for this particular tree. I used my grandma's old picnic tablecloth for the skirt.

Thanks for stopping by today! I'll be back soon with more holiday photos. Meanwhile, it's back to Santa's workshop for this elf! 

🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄

jp