Yeeeeek!
It’s my Favorite time of year!!!! I’m never getting over it, and you can’t make me!! The glorious vibes, and the warm twinkle lights, and the sheer amount of cookies on my counter right now: YES! And all of this with the cherry on top that is the Christmas Tree!
Y’all, if I were the boss here, every room would have trees on trees on trees. In fact this year, I seriously considered putting a nest of like 7 different sized trees on my front porch! I unfortunately ultimately decided against it only because fiscal responsibility and all (UGH!!) boring!! We’ve got the perfect list of tips to take your tree from “utterly gorgeous” (because come on, even a cheesy Christmas tree is still totally amazing) to “omg…I’ve never seen a tree so beautiful with my human eyeballs!” These tips are in order, so right after you get your fresh tree home, or pull your faux tree out of the box, start from the top and work your way down! Starting with the most important of all!
1. Lights Lights Lights
A – Different sizes! This is a little-known but unbelievably amazing trick and when you implement it, you’re going to be totally delighted! Most trees come pre-lit with the little lights, that’s great! Then we add on the bigger size (the size you normally put on your roof!) and remember when stringing your lights we want to go in and out of each branch, not just wrap a tacky string around the whole thing like a nightmare! The more meticulous you can be with your lighting in the very beginning, the happier you’ll be with the end result! 2 sizes of lights, minimum!
B – Frosted lights! Now these can be a little tricky to find, but trust. We’ve tried 2 different types and both were amazing. One type comes slightly frosted, and the other type is the full out white painted bulb, both work amazingly well. These are a secret tip if you’re looking for the super soft glowy look, which…who isn’t! Since our tree is pre-lit with the little clear bulbs, we use these frosted lights for our big bulbs and the mix is so magical.
C – Incandescent or Bust! If you’re trying to get on the LED train, we beg you to immediately stop it. Yes, we know the LED is so much more energy ef
ficient but y’all, until LED’s can get the glowy magic that an incandescent has, then we just can’t support it! You’re never going to get the same look with those LED’s, we swear it!
2. Shaterproofs are your friend
Right after you string those lights, if your tree is anything like ours, you’ll notice some pretty big gaps in different areas close to the trunk of the tree. This is where 10” shatterproofs come into play. Depending on the size of your tree and the size of your gaps, anywhere from 8” – 16” shatterproofs need to be gently shoved in the interior of your tree.
Obviously select your shatterproof color to match your trees theme and select at least 2 or 3 in the color theme. For my tree at home I have matte Christmas red, matte burgundy, and shiny Christmas red! But we’ve done trees with olives and greens, and other trees with champagne and cream. These big ornaments will fill in your big gaps, but may make your tree look a little wonky just for a moment! Until we get to step 3!
3. Sprays and more Sprays
Before you start itching to open those ornament boxes, stop right there! I know your tree is already looking so beautiful because you fluffed all those branches, and you strung all those multi-sized lights, but don’t start going crazy on ornaments yet!
Next step is to start filling in your tree with sprays. We use everything from absolutely massive 48” sprays to little 9” picks, and every size in between. Group your sprays into categories and sizes and start with the big ones, sticking them into bigger gaps in your tree. Work all the way through one size and one style before you start on the other sprays. This keeps everything evenly dispersed.
Of course we always include standard Christmas sprays in evergreen styles, or holly, or berries, or things that are traditionally Christmas. But we also encourage you to try new things! One year we included large stamped-out metal leaves as a spray. Another year we included sprays that weren’t christmas-y at all, they were more mossy, springy, ferny! And we love the look when people use traditional florals as sprays. A beautiful array magnolia flowers or dahlias bring such a fresh beauty!
The truth of the matter is, it is near impossible to add TOO many sprays, and I’m really not exaggerating. I have a 9’ tree at my house and have about 120 sprays, and full intend to get more this year!
At this point, every single year, I want to stop! And one of these years I will! But I typically at least add either ribbon or garland, and then of course about 30 big sprays at the top to stick out and look beautiful. Then, you carry on your happy way and go to town with all your special ornaments. Here is how my tree ended up this year! This year we added in the berry picks, the orange picks, and the orange ornaments! It’s fun to change it up little by little every year! We hope ya’ll all have an incredibly Merry Christmas! 🙂
– Katie
