Christmas Decor 101: Trees

The Tree!!!

If I haven't made this alarmingly obvious already, I love Christmas. The season, the weather, decorating, food, all of it. I really, really love Christmas trees. Real ones. If they have to be fake, let them be silver or blue and made of tinsel from the 50s. One year at home when our family tree kept falling over, we had to trash it. I was gutted when my Dad suggested we stick with the fake decorative trees my Mom had a collection of at the time. My Mom agreed with me, and we went out on Christmas Eve and found another tree, luckily. We ended up having a forest that year. Although I don't seem to be the only one who is okay with this.
I think having a real tree is technically not allowed in my apartment building, but I only bring them in after the landlords are gone for the day anyway, or on the weekend. I also don't put real candles on a tree, and turn the lights off on them when I'm going to bed, so the fire risks are at least mitigated. I digress.

The Archives' Christmas tree last year. Note the red and green film stock, miniature hollinger boxes and "cold" sticker decorations.

New York City's Christmas tree back in January of 2011.

My home Christmases are filled with the weirdest collection of vintage, homemade and wonky ornaments and decorations that have been collected throughout my parents' and my sister's and I's lifetimes. All of them have meaning to us; an empty pack of cigarettes from when my parents were first married, the "Monty Python Angel" that sits atop our tree, the giant Chinese Dragon with beads coming out of its nose attacking the small Christmas village at the bottom of the tree. This year might a little quieter since my parents are attempting to downsize for a move planned in the spring, but it will still be uniquely decorated. I've kept this tradition with my smaller collection of decorations and ornaments, which includes some model boats from Halifax, a camel and paper star from India and a set of 1960s long, multi-coloured teardrop (maybe?) shaped ornaments that I found at Value Village years ago.

Last year's tree. Note the crazy penguin near the middle.

This year's tree has mooses.

And cacti. And chilli peppers. Yep.

I retrieved most of my weird Christmas light collection from home recently, so my tree has been decked out with several extra strings of lights this year.
The metal tinsel adds extra sparkle.

One of these days, I am going to have my own tinsel tree, antique or not. I've been very inspired by Meg Allen Cole's old Threadbanger tutorial to make my own tinsel tree, although maybe to a smaller scale than hers! I cleaned out the local Dollarama recently of this awesome blue/silver tinsel, so I have most of the supplies at least. I tried to upload the actual youtube video, Blogger didn't like that idea. Hence the link and no preview.