Choosing your real Christmas tree and how to decorate it. What type of tree? What colour scheme?

The festive season is creeping up far too fast and the children are counting down the days until we can put the Christmas tree up and decorate.

In years gone by we have visited a local garden centre and picked our tree. Endless hours stood outside whilst my husband holds up tree after tree to see if it's the right height or shape. Do we go Nordmann Fir or Norway Spruce?. When you are stood in a big open space the tree never looks as big as it does when you get it home and place it in its chosen spot but the bigger the tree the better is what we always say! Even if it means having to rearrange the furniture!

How will you decorate your tree though? Previously I have let the children help decorate the tree. We made it a family tradition to all gather around and pass the decorations out of the boxes and hang them together on the newly placed tree. However, my tree has never looked as nice as I would like it to thanks to my slightly over enthusiastic helpers! Colour schemes went out of the window, branches were overloaded with more than one decoration and the youngest spent most of December undecorating the tree too.

Last year I decided to buy lots of new colour coordinated decorations and try my best to make it look fabulous. Apologies in advance to my mini helpers but I'm decorating the tree myself this year. I have also bought a few new ones this year to add to the colour scheme and we bought new lights as they needed an update. 

Here's our Christmas tree from last year, complete with Amazon Alexa to turn on the lights, no more fighting to get to the plug socket behind the tree! 


                                            


What colour schemes do you go for? Do you go for a traditional theme or more modern? Do you put tinsel on your tree? Coloured lights or plain? All these decisions are actually hard to make when you usually don't consider them when decorating the tree so I have been looking for inspiration.

In the two pictures featured are a lovely selection of Christmas tree pictures from friends and the wonderful ways that they decorate each year. Whether you go red and gold, or silver and teal, or just stick with one colour throughout all of the decorations I think you will agree that they all look magnificent and really give some good ideas of colour and styles. 

We are all so excited for December 1st as its always lovely to have the tree in place and decorated, the smell is always lovely and excitement fills the air as it means Christmas is coming very soon. Stay tuned for an update on our Christmas tree and it's decoration once it arrives.