JFF - What's Your Christmas Tree Decorating Style?

I look at the beautiful ornaments on the fancy trees and think, ahhh, lovely! Then I look at my tree with my kids ornaments made in school and I think ahhhh, LOVE! My tree this year is way lopsided with 1/3 of the ornaments on the bottom right, hung by my 4 yo and it has never looked better! I love these times!

I'm the same.... anything goes! I grew up w/this kind of tree. I love the colored balls, so we do have a lot of those. Then we have the random ones that my son made, ones I made when I was a kid, some relatives have given, etc. I love a mish mash tree!!! That's where the memories are!

We have mish mash just like you :)

Growing up, and even now, the family tree was about the children 'helping' decorate the tree. Thus, every year it looks different and has ornaments on it that they made etc. I am not 'anal' about decorating the tree. Neither is my Husband. We just like the kids to enjoy their 'masterpiece' after decorating it.
This year though, at least the ornaments are NOT all on the bottom 1/3 of the tree. My son, now 5, can now disperse the ornaments evenly throughout the whole tree... not just on the bottom.
Its cute.
The kids are proud of their decorating, and we are too, and it is nice.

I have seen some Christmas trees that are so deliberately contrived that I almost felt sorry for them.
My own sister is such a control freak that she is the only person I don't worry about making ornaments for every year because she won't put it on her tree. She has displayed them in other places in her house, but not on the tree if they don't go with her theme or aren't a perfect height and width to match whatever else she's doing.
She called me last year on my birthday which is just before Christmas and told me that after spending a thousand hours finding the perfect tree and then decorating it perfectly for the first time in their new house, her cat freaked out and apparently attacked it and the whole thing got knocked over and she cried for two hours before she could even pick things back up.

That's getting a little too deep into something that's going to be dismantled anyway for me.

Our trees are always beautiful. We have such a hodge podge of things my kids made when they were little, things my mother in law made before she passed away, ornaments other people we love have given us....something new gets added every year.

When my leg was broken, my son brought in the artificial tree and the ornaments from the garage and set everything up and decorated the tree himself to surprise me while I took a nap with my leg elevated.
He was 12 and very stealthy.
To this day, I think that's the most beautiful tree we ever had.
I cried that he wanted to surprise me that way.
I didn't change a single thing.
It really was beautiful.
In more ways than one.

Throw it all on and hope it sticks.

I have some ornaments that coordinate, but it is mostly eclectic. Each year my husband and I purchase an ornament for each other, and we have the kids pick one out for themselves. I'm really proud of our tree. Last year my mom brought me all my own ornaments from my childhood, including ones that I made at school. I love it!

My sister's MIL has a themed tree each year--each year a different theme--no heirloom pieces, which to me is beautiful, yes, but very devoid of any emotional attachment.

I also mish mash... but I try to keep it in a color scheme. I went to Costco and bought all the decorating balls and snow flakes in golden and red. Costco has amazing packages with colors that match.
That is my base. Then i add everything else I have in between Costco ornaments.... all the special pictures of every year... special ornaments, baby first christmas etc.. etc... It makes it look so us... I enjoy looking at it... it has all the memories from the past years!! and that is what is most important to me!

The same way I grew up with :)

We have 'special ornaments' (everyone gets a new one every year), we have antique hand made ornaments (that my great grandmother made in the 1800s), we have colored glass balls, we have clear plastic ones (filled with mementos (actually, scraps from costumes and concert tickets, and schtuff), we have ones we've handblown at a local glass shop. We have colorful lights. We have a star. We periodically have ribbon, and sometimes have popcorn or cranberries.

If we have a theme... the theme is :memories of christmas and christmases past

First different colored lights all over the tree. Then, silver or gold tinsel. After that it's a mix-up of ornaments from when I was a kid all the way until now and my 3 kids ornaments. It's a mish mash of lovelyness and I think it looks GREAT! (personally, I think a well planned tree just doesn't look festive!) In fact, I let my kids help decorate and I leave the ornaments wherever they put them. In past years that means I have had sections with TONS of ornaments and then naked sections. It's a family time of year with a family tree! lol
L.

when it was just my husband and i, I did the "color scheme" tree, it was blue and silver and beautiful. Then we had our daughter and it became more important to us to have a "family" tree. We now hang ornaments with some special meaning to it and look forward to adding more as the years go by.

the theme is 'anything goes.'
not my style but how do i impose my style to my kids? like i would like just white lights. um, my kids don't.
so i let them go nuts decorating. the only tradition we have is each year we buy 1 new german (not made in china) nutcracker, and each year kids get to choose one new ornament and 1 new snow globe. kids love when this time of the far comes.

We're like you, just kind of a bunch of different things, individual ornaments that appeal to me and things that the kids have made over the years. We have a set of Disney characters and a "Bride's Tree" collection. I also like ones that look like candy or other sweet treats, the snowmen made out of marshmallows, and retro-style glass blown ones. There's one that DH made himself as a kid and others that belonged to my parents that were on our tree when I was a kid.

We are basically the same. We have ornaments from our childhood, new ones that mean something to us and some that we find funny or amusing. Nothing is coordinated (perhaps the lights) but we also put photos in small hanging frames of family that have passed on to feel that on that day they are with us still. I used to want to be more together about the tree but in the end we thought hey this is personalized thing and important to our family so we'll do what make us happy. Good luck to you and have a cool yule!

We have anything goes. I did work for disney for a time so naturally I have a ton of disney ornaments. So by default we have a "disney" themed tree. My mom technically has an anything goes but she has made and bought mostly woodcraft gingerbread ornaments. You can randomly find the ones we made in school or got from carls jr. or something. If my kids make an ornament I don't want them to feel bad that it won't "fit" in MY tree.

We have the living family Christmas tree at my parents' house, which my sister and I help Mom decorate. Rainbow Christmas lights because we like color for Christmas (we have a rainbow house ornament). Then pretty red and gold ribbon. We also have a mish-mash of ornaments, a lot of which were made by me in elementary school or include photos of me and my sisters. It's hard to find an empty branch and sometimes one branch holds several ornaments. Bows and bells go on too, along with a bell I made. We also put on lots of rainbow candycanes. We also have a picture of Mom's dog and cat with Santa as an ornament and ornaments that look like our pets. We always have an angel on the tree and the wings are fiberoptic, so they light up and change color. We used to have a tree skirt when we used a fake tree, but now we don't because the live trees are messy and we have to water them.

I can't stand color schemes, themes, or impersonal ornaments because they're too boring, fancy, an not festivee for me and my wacky family of holiday lovers. Christmas is the whole family's favorite time of year and we all go nuts.

As for my own tree, it's a mish-mash with rainbow Christmas lights and a star on top.

My style is the same as yours. I call it eclectic. Each year I collect a couple more ornaments to add to the mish mash.

I do a mixed tree. It is elegant and fun. I have a big red, green and white bow on top, a few large red poinsettas and red and white "floral picks" stuck in the branches. The lights are white. All of our sentimental ornaments are hanging on the branches, too. I think it is beautiful!!!

well, i grew up with my family hiking out to the woods and getting a cedar - not pine, not fir - cedar tree, and hauling it into the house. i'm not anti-real tree, i'm not even really anti-cedar tree (they are free! and my mom still does it, and there is a lot of nostalgia involved) but it's not for me. i LOVE my fake prelit tree that we got on clearance (regularly $200, marked down to like $50) the day after christmas one year. LOVE IT. and last year i also hit the clearance rack (we'd had our new tree several years but were still using old mishmash of decorations, and bulbs, like you describe) and i got all blue bulbs and garland. IT IS GORGEOUS!! i have always had my silver star which i LOVE, but i tell you what - for years i had a dang GOLD tree skirt because every time i would go to buy a silver one i was appalled at the crappy quality and the ridiculous prices. but i have all blue and silver now and I LOVE LOVE LOVE it. and of course, our collection of personal ornaments.

when i put it up this weekend, i did everything but the personal ones, because my son was visiting grandma and i wasn't going to do the personal ornaments until he came home, and my husband was so funny. he stopped, looked at the tree, and said, "babe...it looks good. REALLY really good. but...it's really starting to look like a magazine." and he was so down about it...lol. the "girlie" in me practically giggled in delight. this year is our first with a really well-put-together tree and i am in heaven. we have never had a lot of money to spend on "extras" like christmas decorations, and i always made myself ok with that...but i am just over the moon with how good everything looks this year.

somehow my hubby got it together with the christmas lights too...they are the best we've ever had (he has always done just a "it's good enough" job...and many years i was a little embarrassed lol...but that was his domain...!) he did an amazing job with them this year.

Merry Christmas! :)

"Anything goes" -- we have ornaments from when I was a little girl, and my boys both have ornaments that they receive from my aunt and uncle every year, plus the ornaments that my husband and I bought the first few years we were married, and we just try to get as many on there as will fit. :-)

I actually don't like themed or "well planned out" trees -- mostly because it is so foreign to me (I never saw them until just a few years back), and they seem *too* planned and, well, sterile. They look like what you might see in a store or something commercial, rather than in a family.

We do balls of all colors and then each year my boys pick out a single ornament for themselves and I get us a family ornament. I usually buy them to from the mall kiosk and have their names and year put on it. The personal ornaments are typically significant to something that happened that year. Like last year my oldest got a snowman playing baseball because he started playing t-ball. Then when my boys move out they can take their ornaments from over the years with them. We decorate the tree as a family. I will admit that I usually rearrange the ornaments to make the tree look more organized. My tree is pre-lit. So the lights are done. We finish with candy canes that the kids end up eating and then put the angel on top. I don't do an elaborate or magazine worthy tree. Christmas is for my kids and the tree is as much their creation as it is mine. I say leave your tree as is and enjoy the time that you spend decorating it with the ones you love.

I prefer white lights but my new pre-lit tree (bought used) has multicolored lights! I buy at least two new ornaments every year from where we have traveled or what my son is interested in and it all goes on the tree! So mismatched but great fun to get it all out!

We have everything from yoda to superman to tinkerbell on our tree. It's wonderful. I buy everyone an ornament and a family ornament every year. Last year I even bought one for our new dogs. The new ornaments are a family tradition!

I don't anymore. No mess, no stuff to unwrap and then take down and rewrap.
Gave away all the decorations and kept a few strings of lights. That's it.
A wreath on the wall near the door.
I'm not the grinch. I just had to cut down on my stress level.

We decorate 2 trees. One in the living rooom with every ornament carefully placed and with a color scheme (my husband's tree) and one in the family room with multi-colored lights and the kids ornaments and some of mine from my childhood. That one feels like Christmas to me, but I have learned to appreciate the color theme too.

This year my girls decided they wanted to put all of the ornaments on the tree. I mean ALL of them. I had several boxes that I hadn't used in several years because my grandmother made me some very beautiful ones (which my kiddies always hung up). I told them that we had to stop decorating and we still had two boxes left. There isn't very many ornaments on the bottom because the older girls were worried that the youngest (now 2) would get to them. There aren't very many ornaments on top because only one girl can reach that high. The middle however is the most beautifully stuffed tree I have seen in several years. They had so much fun decorating. Some of my girls learned how to crochet this year. One of them made a chain about 8 feet long (it is a light brown). They decided it would make a good garland and hung it up too. Now I personally don't like the 8 foot brown garland but my children do so I told them it was beautiful and they did a great job getting it on the tree. So my style is whatever my children think looks beautiful! Merry Christmas!!

Our tree is like yours, but I would love to have a second one that has a beautiful color scheme. I could never get rid of the mix and match tree though, because that is the one that has all of our special moment ornaments, like baby's first Christmas and the suitcase ornament from when we were traveling mid-move on Christmas.

Every year my mom bought us kids an ornament. So I have all the ones from when I was little. I have my kids make one every year. So they have theirs. My husband and I decided that since we get Christmas money from his parents we can buy ourselves what we want instead of dreading what to get each other. So we exchange ornaments on Christmas instead of presents. So our tree is a major hodge podge. Then I have another kinda podge, but it is all angles, nativity, crosses. Sometimes I have the kids do a paper chain for it.

I usually decorate the Christmas Tree in red and gold, or blue and silver..... but this year it started like that until the kids found blue lights.....and then my husband found other colorful ornaments and more lights. It has bows, garlands, hearts, lights, ornaments made by the kids.....So.....our pine tree this year is VERY colorful and fun with no place for more ornaments (LOL) but I love it because this year the whole family actually participated in decorating our Christmas tree and home.....love it!