So, I was a busy little bee this weekend & got one of our Christmas trees put up and decorated. I know, I know…it’s not even Thanksgiving. But, here’s the deal—if I didn’t do it this weekend, it wouldn’t have happened. And I’m not about to skip putting up my Christmas tree. The next several weeks are jam-packed, so it was a necessity—and a fun necessity at that!
In putting up said tree, I was reminding myself of little tricks and tips here and there that I’ve either learned the hard way or acquired from various people over the years. (For those who don’t know me, Christmas is totally my holiday. Well, mine and Jesus’. I just lease the bulk of my share to Santa.) It was while thinking these things over that I realized it’d be good to write them down, which lead to the thought I should share them with others too, which lead to the thought that I’m a slacker at blogging & this would be the perfect thing to write about…as long as I can remember to do so. So, I shall share tips & tricks as they come to me. Some may come across as no-brainers, but hopefully something useful will be shared.
I should also warn you that, while I love to do things over-the-top, I am also quite frugal and always on the lookout for a good deal. Which leads me to one of the two tips I’m sharing today:
1) Buy your Christmas supplies a year in advance. I know it can be a pain to store things like wrapping paper & that it takes up space (under-bed sweater boxes work well for this purpose), but it’s well worth it to save. How? By hitting up the post-Christmas sales, of course. Target is my personal favorite for after Christmas sales & I usually buy once it gets to 75% off. Three years ago, I bought my first Christmas tree & all the decorations. I was out on my own & wanted to have a tree, of course, but I wasn’t going to pay through the nose for it. So, I waited out Christmas without my own tree & then loaded up. I spent about $250-300 total. What did I get? $1000-$1200 in ornaments, lights and a tree. You can imagine how much stuff I got. It’s ridiculous. My logic at the time was that if an ornament ever broke (they are a unique design), I’d never find a replacement. So, I bought out the leftovers of the entire line from two different Targets. Everything from tree skirts, area rugs, wall hangings, table runners, ornaments—all of it. In there, I got a 7.5” pre-lit tree that is quite nice and was normally $200. I paid $50 for it. Well worth every penny.
Last year, I decided that I may get sick of the ornament styles I bought & so I wanted to get an alternate style with which I could interchange the overall look. I spent about $125 (since I already had the tree and lights) and still loaded up plenty on a beautiful Swiss chalet-style set. That’s the look I went with this year. Since Artis & I combined households and we each had a tree, we put mine upstairs and positioned it such that you can see it from the entryway too. It looks great, if I do say so myself! I couldn’t be more pleased with how it turned out.
Anyway, I know we’re all very much a “want it now” society. But, if you can wait it out and buy post-Christmas—and not just intend to, but actually do so—it’s so worth it. I have $1600-$1800 of Christmas décor for one particular tree & my out-of-pocket cost in a three-year period totaled $400-450. Not too shabby, I say!
2) Tree decorating tip: Start big, end small. This may seem like one of those no-brainers I mentioned, but it surprises me by how many people clearly get it wrong—and you can tell this just by looking at a tree. When decorating, after putting on your lights and tinsel (or tinsel alternative—I’ll save that topic for another day), put your largest ornaments on first. Do not go astray and start putting little ones on too. Sort them out by size & get those large ones on there. Once you have all of those positioned, then you can fill in the empty spaces with the small ornaments. If you have small ones you want to make sure go on the tree, put those to the side and make sure you position those first, after placing the larger ones. If you have too many small ones you want on there, you can always go back and remove larger ornaments you feel like you can ultimately do without. It can be likened to a haircut—you can always take away, but you can never put back. In this case, you can never give the tree back some open space if you didn’t plan for it in the first place. It looks ridiculous & you can totally tell when someone first put on all the small ornaments & then later tried to cram on the big ones. Avoid this visual disaster.
And here, dear friends, is a picture (using my phone’s camera, so it’s not exactly brilliantly done) of the upstairs tree I did yesterday:
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