Oh Christmas Tree

I am totally thrown off by the schedule this year. With Thanksgiving being a week later than last year, it feels like I am being robbed of an entire week to celebrate Christmas. I blame the pilgrims.
That said, can you believe that in 3 weeks from today, Christmas will be over? Kaput. Done-zo. Sayonara. *insert frantic, pouty face here*

Monday I will reveal our whole Christmas home tour, but for today it’s all about the tree.

Last year, in our little apartment, we just used a baby tree and I put very little thought into the end result. It served its purpose.

This year I decorated with a little more intentionality. Here is our neutral & metallic woodland tree!
I kept things in the brown/silver/gold family, and I love the way it turned out!
This is the first time I’ve decorated a full sized Christmas tree, so I was a little worried about the cost of getting enough to fill it. Outside of lights (1000 lights, to be exact. Oy), I spent less than $10 on tree decorations this  year.  I’m sorry; what? I got a huge pack of 40 beautiful ornaments in just the right colors for $4.98 at Home Depot on Black Friday. Then I spent $3 on the ribbon at a thrift store, made all the pinecone ornaments, bought the sparkly Owl ornament for a little over $1 at Walmart, and everything else I already had from childhood or from the last couple of years!

A few detail shots of some favorite special ornaments.

I made the pine cone ornaments. More details soon.

I even stuck some stalks of wheat leftover from my fall decor in the branches for some texture.
A few things I learned about decorating a tree:
1. Layering is important. Hanging ornaments at different depths really adds a lot to the…well…depth.
2. Use what you have. You don’t have to stick to traditional ornaments. Pine cones found in your yard and random items collected from your home are fair game.
3. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Next year, I would love to have some larger statement ornaments for more variety, and I would love to add something fun like feathers or tinsel. But it’s ok to take it one year at a time.

One final photo without the lights…

P.S. Want to hear a secret? The tree was a wonderful gift, and it was a little too big to fit in our living room, so we folded some of the branches up against the wall to make it a 3/4 semicircle tree. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do 🙂
Come back Monday for a full Christmas Home Tour!

P.P.S. This is my 100th blog post! Thanks for sticking around and paying attention to my little voice on the web. It’s been a fun journey so far!