05 December 2012

oh Christmas tree

Greetings all,
How do you . . . 'Christmas tree'??  I grew up with a rather superior faux tree, from England.  It was quite the big deal to put her together each year & decorate with ornaments collected from all over the world.  Check the lights work first, then apply tinsel & finally . . . the decorations.  Being the last child, i was in charge of the family Christmas tree for many years, until i got married & left home at 22.  Mum said the tree was never ever the same again.  Sob.  Perhaps it had something to do with letting little grandchildren decorate it??
 We do something different every year, as so often - we are moving interstate at Christmas - i'm afraid many years we haven't even put a tree up!!  There has been tinsel hung on palm trees in Darwin, a picture of a tree stuck on a hotel wall in Sydney, a stack of pine cones in the Brisbane bachelor pad & a small faux tree from in serviced apartments in Canberra.  Purely for the children, i'm not religious & my husband has missed 5 Christmases  due to war zones.  I think they are beautiful though.   
 This year we skipped the annual trip to a tree farm to pick & chop down a tree, instead we've gone small scale with an old merchandising prop of mine, with simple lanterns, all popped on the bench in the entrance way.  I like it & you can see it from the street!!
 I've added a few simple felt decorations, with natural wicker & this cute mini pinecone ball, now i need to wrap all the gifts & ensure everyone is ticked off the list.  
 This cost practically nothing as the bench was from a shop window display, i had the tree & the lanterns are a combined set of $1 broken ones from Typo.  Love my wicker star below, it's so witchy.
 Do you go for a real tree, enjoying the smell of pine throughout the silly season, or fake/ faux/ sticky?? All out enormous with every decoration you have ever acquired, or different themes, including minimalist??  When do you put your tree up, if at all??  I started fiddling last week but from the looks of Instragram, mid November is acceptable.  I grew up with it being a 1st of December event, & strictly down on the 6th of January.  Happy decorating, love Posie

14 comments:

A said...

I don't think I'll have a tree but yours looks lovely. Merry Christmas :-)))

Lilli boo said...

Posie, I love the simplicity of your tree, there's all sorts of interpretations to decorating and unless the children put ALL the decorations on one side of the tree there are no rules...I'm slowly teaching them that it's nice to surround the tree whilst decorating an art in itself... bless. x

Brenda @ 13 Acres said...

i love a real christmas tree - we put one up at the holiday house just last weekend and at home we will make a substitute, probably something out of paper i can stick on the wall. i love your tree! your decorations are divine too xx

Unknown said...

I've just put up a pic of what we do on the blog.

Usually we have a plastic tree but this year the baby is just learning to pull herself up onto furniture. I can see the whole thing just falling over onto her.

I've made a Christmas tree wall mural out of baubles. Looks pretty and Christmassy but out of reach of little hands.

Kylie said...

As with you there are years that we have not put the tree up. I like to wait until the first of December before putting up the tree or decorating the house. We have a crazy big tree that Tim bough many years ago in his excitement that he was home for Christmas and not in a war zone:) It is decorated only with hand made (or purchased handmade) deocrations and I love it. As the kids bring home decorations from Kinder and School they will also be added.

Polly said...

I love your take on a Christmas tree this year,

Sarah B said...

I went without a tree for a few years living in my small apartment, so when we bought this place I was reallt excited to buy the biggest tree I could, thanks to our high ceilings. SO then, whilst I have stuck to fairly tradtitional colours I put everything I can on the tree and often buy extras in the post chrissy sales. It's going up this Saturday :)

Anonymous said...

Love the tree it looks great! Im going minimal this year too. Ours goes up first weekend in December ead treesand down before NYE...had a fake for the last 4yrs but always real before then...I love dead trees though. Have a lovely time with Hubby home this year xx

Anonymous said...

Oh I love those heart lights, super cute!

Anonymous said...

Really like the mix of ornaments.

Life Love and Hiccups said...

Loving your gorgeous branch tree. We have a fakey but I am pedantic about how it is decorated. Yet Another OCD trait of mine :) xx

polkadotpeticoat said...

Love your tree....I enjoyed your stories from Christmas past....made me smile!

seabreezequilts said...

Usually we have 2 trees, one that the kids are in charge of and mine where I have all the special ornaments and handmade ornies that I have collected from swaps. The kids tree is a faux green plastic one which is starting to look a bit tired so I might be heading out to the sales on boxing day. My tree is one of those white stick ones with the fibre optics so you can see all the decorations. I haven't put mine up this year there just has been too much going on in my neck of the woods. I have tried to have the rule 1 December but the asking starts as soon as the Xmas Pageant has happened. I try to explain that it use to be at the end of November but when I was a girl but Adelaide hosted the Formula 1 Grand Prix they changed it to the beginning of November and it has never changed back. I think the tree has been up for 2 weeks so at least I avoided it for a couple of weeks. It always comes down New Years Day.

Lilli boo said...

Love the simplicity of your tree. We have had our little fake one up for 10 days then my husband went out and bought the 'real' tree...it is enormous, smells great, however it wasn't size I was looking for :)