A Christmas Tree is a lot like a wedding dress, in the sense that once you have the tree decorations selected, the decorations for the rest of the house fall blissfully into place. Here is my personal guide to decorating a perfect tree that will make a gorgeous holiday centerpiece this year, and it will only take about an hour.
First thing’s first
Naturally, the first thing that I start with is the tree. Since I have 8-foot ceilings in my home a 6-foot tree works out just fine for me. Last year I purchased a pre-lit tree, which makes decorating much easier as it eliminates the hours we spent untangling lights in the past. My tree is pre-lit with miniature white lights, uniformly spaced around the entire width of the tree, so it’s simply out of the box and on to the décor.
If you’d like to make your artificial tree seem more authentic, consider getting some pine scented spray or air fresher for your home. No one will ever know the difference.
Send me an angel…
I personally prefer a very traditional tree, with a decorator’s flare. When selecting the ornaments and trimmings for my tree, I always start with finding the perfect angel. This year, she’s a brunette with a deep red robe and gold sash. These are very traditional colors for the holiday season, but as I mentioned, I am a staunch traditionalist.
The skirt
The next thing that I do is place the skirt around the tree. I will always purchase the tree skirt to match the angel exactly, so it helps to do all of your shopping in one place, so that all of your decoration colors match to avoid any type of different tones or hues.
Garland and ribbon
This year, I am purchasing a fake cranberry garland to hang around the tree. Prior to placing the ornaments on the tree, I drape the garland around the tree, as I would a string of lights, and move on to the ribbons.
I also purchased two spools of 4-inch thick ribbon, one that is gold and the other that is the same deep red as the angel’s robes. I drape the ribbons from the top of the tree, and wind them straight down through the branches of the tree, to create a very soft effect of the ribbon falling directly from the tip of the tree to the base. I then curl the bottoms of the ribbon at the base of the tree, and am now ready to place the ornaments.
Ornaments
I prefer very traditional ornaments. I will typically purchase at least 4 boxes of gold spherical ornaments and 4 boxes of red spherical ornaments, and evenly space them throughout the tree. I will also purchase two boxes of white ornaments accented with gold trip to cover any blank spaces on the tree and add some contrast to the color scheme.
When decorating, I space the ornaments by color and type around the tree, using the gold and red ornaments first and then moving on to fill any blank spaces with the contrasting ornaments.
After the ornaments are placed, we place the angel on top and our tree is done. The entire decorating process from beginning to end takes about an hour, but the result will be a tree that you would expect to see in a department store. You’ll be amazed at the compliments you will receive on your decorator perfect 1-hour tree.
