I thought I’d start today asking one of a series of “Question of the Day” questions, about Christmas. We’re all alike, but we’re all different too, and I always love reading about how each of you celebrate, decorate, and commemorate Christmas. We’ll start off slow and easy this year, with the first question about your tree. 🙂
Are you going to put up a tree this year? Is it a real tree or an artificial tree? Are the ornaments an eclectic mixture, or very carefully chosen, as part of a theme or other plan? What color are the lights on your tree? And finally – is it up yet or not? If not, when do you put it up and take it down?
Ok, now for my answers! Our tree is up, and it’s an artificial pre-lit tree we bought last year (Tim’s job is to put up the tree and string the lights, so you can understand why he was so interested in getting a pre-lit tree!). We put it up the weekend after Thanksgiving. The ornaments are a very eclectic mixture – some from my childhood that I saved when my mom was going to throw them out, some from when I was single (pre-Tim, as we like to call it!), and the rest we’ve bought since we’ve been married. On most vacations, we try to get an ornament from where ever we’ve visited. Some, I just see at Target and like and buy 😀 This new tree is prelit with white lights, and I have been doing white lights on my tree for about 15 years now. I may eventually gravitate back to colored lights. I saw some really cool LED colored lights in the store this past weekend. Ours will stay up through Christmas, but I’ll have it down by New Years Eve.
Now, leave me a comment and let me know about you, your tree, who decorates it, what it has on it, etc. And have a very joyous holiday season!
No tree for me this year. I will be travelling for Christmas so I decorated my apartment but didn’t put up a tree.
I finally managed to get our tree up this weekend…it took several days! It’s a pre-lit 4-ft artificial tree and I love it. It has colored lights. The ornaments are about half and half: half regular, ball-type ornaments from a set (glittery colors), and half special ornaments. We’ve bought a special ornament each year that we’ve been married, and now G gets a special ornament each year, too, plus I have a handful of random ornaments that have been given to me by different people over the years.
We had our tree bought and put up on the Saturday following Thanksgiving! We decorated it on the Sunday night after it was up! White lights only for this girl and decorations from years past! Every year we say we are going to buy new decorations and never do. The store bought decorations are dwindling year by year, but the homemade decorations just keep growing! 🙂 And, I like it that way (for now)…I don’t want a cluttered tree, though! We all decorate it together and my daughter puts the crowning glory on it! An angel I bought many years ago when I worked at Bath & Body Works! It is so cute! We will more than likely take it down the day after Christmas this year ’cause we’re leaving that day to go to Florida and I’m a little freaked out about leaving the tree alone for two weeks!!! I think that covers it! 😉 i love your qotd’s!!!!
Merry Merry Christmas!!!
I just posted about this, but the short and sweet version–fake tree with all handmade ornaments.
Our tree is a 7″ artificial pre-lit (white) tree. It’s not up yet. I used to put the tree up on Christmas Eve, but for the past few years, I’ve put it up the weekend before Christmas. This year, I’m putting it up either this coming weekend or sometime next week.
We have no balls on the tree. Wait, I take that back. We have balls from Home Depot that the company gives each year. This year should be #11, but I think I’m missing one – I’ll have to check on that. We have a lot of little toys – santas, snowmen, reindeer, etc. There are some home-made pictures of Shelby and Ashlie and some ornaments that Donna and Susan made. There are 2 dogs that “bark” songs that I put low so Maggie and Teddy can bump them with their noses. Then I use a bunch of red bows all over.
On the top of the tree, I use 2 angels. One is a store-bought one and the other is one that Shelby made years ago out of a paper plate.
I posted a picture of our tree from last year on my blog about a week ago.
Real tree, colored lights.
We haven’t put it up yet. Since both myself and the Certain Little boy are sick, we don’t want to go out in these freezing temperatures to pick one out. Maybe in a couple days.
My ornament collection is a lot like yours. I have some antique ones of my grandmother, a lot from my childhood, and then a bunch I’ve collected since we’ve been married. My favorite places to get ornaments is either TJMaxx/Marshalls (they have great ornaments for a great price) and Crate and Barrell. I like those european really fancy colored glass balls.
I make my husband help me with the tree.
We put up our tree the first weekend of December. Artificial with white lights. The ornaments are a mixure with no theme to it at all. My kids get an ornament every year in their stockings, what strikes my fancy for them. So that’s three a year that goes on there. Once they are gone I’d love to have a color scheme going. But now I love my sentimental tree!
Are you going to put up a tree this year? Yes we are!
Is it a real tree or an artificial tree? It will be a real tree.
Are the ornaments an eclectic mixture, or very carefully chosen, as part of a theme or other plan? No themes here – I bought a lot the first year we were married, and now we get a new one every year.
What color are the lights on your tree? – Colored, the old school type with the bright colors 🙂
And finally – is it up yet or not? If not, when do you put it up and take it down? – We’ll get it next weekend and take it down shortly after Christmas.
*hugs*
Oh, I love talkin’ Christmas trees!! We have an artificial one…always have had. When I was a kid, I wanted a real one desperately, until the year I helped decorate one of my high school teacher’s tree at her house and I saw just how sticky (both in the sappy and prickly sense) they were, and what a mess they made. That was the last time I wanted a real tree! 😉
Ours is already up — we put it up the weekend after Thanksgiving. It’s a pre-lit (with WHITE lights….hate multicolored ones, though that wasn’t always the case) and it even revolves, which makes decorating it very easy. Just pick a spot and stand there, hanging on the ornaments as it goes around. If you miss a spot, be patient, it’ll be back again. heee!
We’re not much into themes or color schemes on our tree. It’s a mish mash of ornaments for us! 🙂
Our tree is an artificial 7 1/2 ft. pre-lit tree with white lights. Our ornament collection is a mix, but because I like red so much, many of them have red on them somewhere. I buy one family ornament each year, and one for both my kids representing something from the previous year. I also tend to pick up a few new ornaments after Christmas when they are on sale. I usually do the tree myself, but my hubby does get it down from the attic for me. We leave it up until New Year’s.
We are very alike! Ours is real though. We’re going tonight to get it so that it’s ready to be decorated this weekend.
I always use white lights but my kids talked me into colored one year. Our ornaments are a bunch of old ones from when the kids were little and a bunch of handmade that were passed down to me.
We also pick one up on each major vacation we go on.
The boys want me to keep it that way rather than a theme. They like to reminisce as we decorate.
Hi Stacy. Mine’s up. Artificial with lights pre-strung. Clear lights only. I have several collectable ornaments from land’s end and pottery barn that are engraved with the kids names and have pictures in some and then fill in with red balls and white snowflakes. I have a boyd’s bear angel on top that is all off white and strings of pearls… It looks perty to me 🙂
Well, we live in an apartment and I’m not sure if we’re allowed to have a real tree or not. We have a little 2-foot artificial tree. But we haven’t been able to put that up since we got the kitties 3 years ago. They would destroy it, thinking it was a toy. So we don’t do a tree. Which doesn’t really bother us as there’s not really room in our place for 1. Someday maybe we’ll have a house.
Since we are going away this year we will get a small live one to have. When we were little, we always walked to the woods and cut one down, then when our neighbors started a christmas tree farm we they always gave us one for free.
So I am kind of a snob about Christmas trees, I like them real. My husband always had fake ones- I remember the first time I spent Christmas at his house, I was so disappointed to find this out, that he took me and his younger brother out to buy a real one -it came as quite a shock to his family.
I start my Christmas stuff Dec 1 and end Jan 1. So anytime after Dec 1 the tree can go up. We have not bought one yet this year, maybe over this weekend.
We have our tree up. It is a 6.0 foot prelit, white lites tree, and it is decorated in little blown glass ornaments. It is really pretty. It went up day before yesterday! A picture of it is on my blog.
Hugs,
Becca
We’ve only ever done fake trees – less mess, as you say. And a few years ago, we bought a pre-lit tree. It saves a lot of time, but now that the lights are going out and the branches are going “pffflt!” it will be time for a new one next year.
Our outside lights have, for the past two years, been in a blue and/or blue and white pattern (seemed to work for the Super Bowl results last year, so I’m hoping for a repeat!); indoors, we have just the lights on the Christmas tree this year. Not much extra in the way of decorations. We put up the tree and decorations this past weekend, and they’ll probably come down around New Year’s. Back in my childhood, the tree stayed up until Epiphany; now it comes down around New Year’s.
We have had an artificial pre-lit tree for five years, but this year when we pulled it out at less than half of the lights worked. It must have taken a beating in the move. We ended up going out to get a real tree. We might go back to artificial next year, it’s hard to keep the real tree watered b/c it’s so dry here, and also we like to keep it up for a long time. I grew up with only real trees, and he grew up with only artificial.
We put it up the day after Thanksgiving. That’s how we roll. 🙂 White lights only. We also wrap the trunk with a strand of big bulbed outdoor-type lights, it makes the tree glow from the inside. Saw that on Oprah. 🙂
When we first got together, we put up two trees, b/c my husband’s tree was always artificial and coordinated in a perfect color scheme, with ribbon and all that stuff. My tree has always been real and packed with personal, handmade, or “whatever” ornaments. Then one year we did lights only (also an Oprah idea– simplifying), and that was nice. This year I bought a kit of ornaments in shades of green, and that’s all that’s on the tree. It’s pretty, but it doesn’t feel personal. I would like to do another small tree in the house somewhere and put my personal ornaments on it.
My Granny always said the tree should come down before the New Year, because you don’t want the old year’s things to carry over. This year it will probably come down by then because it’ll be so dry. I like to leave it up at least through New Year’s Day, if I can.
I totally, TOTALLY understand Tim wanting a pre-lit tree. I do the lights in our house, and next year I am putting my foot down — we’re getting a pre-lit tree. We have an artificial tree, but every other year or so we buy a real one, because that’s what my husband and the kids like. But they don’t put the lights on! This year we took a day and cut our own tree (see my blog). We put it up a week or two after Thanksgiving and I usually take it down New Year’s Day or later. I try to leave it up until Epiphany Sunday.
We decorate with anything and everything — homemade, storebought, paper chains, whatever the spirit tells us to for that year. I also collect new ornaments each year for the kids and also from our travels. Everyone gets an ornament, even the dog. Someday I would like to make a tree skirt (like Barb’s), but for now, I have a store-bought skirt that I picked up on sale.
Fun question! I like reading everyone’s answers.
Mine is up, tree went up Sunday after Thanksgiving, artificial with white lights on it! Decorations went on a few days later but it’s all done and looks good….angel on top. I like to leave it up til New Years or when the kids leave, I love how it looks and am always sad to take it down. One year Don strung colored lights and white lights on a tree and had them where you could do one or the other at a time or both if we wanted to be all different, it was fun that way!
We do a real tree every year. We get it the day after Thanksgiving and get it up and decorated that same weekend. Our ornaments are a mixture. We usually buy two special ornaments each year. They are ornaments that are significant to our family. This year, we bought an Elvis and a fat cat ornament. I’ll be posting pictures of them later tonight. We change the lights from time to time. The past two years it’s been colored lights but this year they are clear. We also tried to make a UT themed tree, with orange and white ball ornaments. We leave the tree up until the first weekend in January and then we take it down. We like to drink egg nog while we put the tree up and when we take it down.
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