How I Decorate My Christmas Tree + How to Stick With One Christmas Decor Theme!
I have a confession…I tend to go WAY overboard on Christmas. Sometimes, too overboard. It’s taken me about a decade to figure out what works together and what doesn’t. And truly, it all comes down to sticking with a theme.
The main Christmas themes out there:
Monochrome, “glam winter wonderland”, cozy, rustic, and the traditional green and red. Not to say you can’t incorporate a little bit of rustic into your winter wonderland, but try to stay with one theme 90% of the time to avoid it getting wayyy too cluttered – it can start to look tacky!
When I shop for decor I want to buy everything because it’s all so cute, but you really have to ask yourself if it matches your theme! Last year was our first year in our new house so I redid all our Christmas decor. I wanted a “cozy monochrome farmhouse” look and ended up finding so much “glam” decor (I cannootttt help it I think it’s in my blood): feathers, fur, glitter….that it was not what I was going for at all! I streamlined it this year, sold all the glam decor and was able to nail the cozy monochrome farmhouse look (with a tiiiiny bit of glam thrown in there. hey, I can’t help it!).
How I Decorate The Christmas Tree:
- The base layers: Start with the garland, then add any ribbon, then your “foliage”. Foliage could be berries, sticks, or anything popping out of the tree to give it dimension. With garland or ribbon, I like to make it drape (not pulled taut) to look natural.
- Ornaments: Start with the biggest ornaments, then add the smaller ones. I love big oversized ornaments…they make such a huge statement. I have about 20 oversized ornaments on our big tree, and another 20 “big” ornaments. I like to space these out evenly first because they stick out the most and you notice any errors in spacing with the bigger ones.
- Add the “basic” filler ornaments to fill the tree. I add white, clear, and different shades of metallics allll over (about 50 of these). I also like to add a lot of them to the interior of the tree to add volume. By interior, I mean placing them closer to the interior pole (or trunk if it’s real) on the branches.
- The skirt: You do NOT need a typical tree skirt! Now there are some cute ones out there…I even linked some below! But get creative if you want to…a furry or cable knit blanket (also linked some below) or a basket (linked one of these below too) or trough make great “tree skirts”.
- Non-tree decor: To me, a tree looks lonely by itself. I usually accompany it with a mini tree or a bucket of logs. If you don’t have room for it, try decorating under the tree with some faux presents you pre-wrapped or a stack of logs.
My favorite Christmas things this year:
