How to decorate your Christmas Tree

So Sissy and I have been decorating trees since we were little. My mother's favorite time of the year were the holidays because she could decorate the entire house with her centerpieces and beautiful pieces from Vonda's. And Sissy has been decorating trees professionally for quite some time here in our town! So when we were decorating her tree yesterday we thought we would do a step-by-step tutorial of how we go about decorating our trees. Enjoy and Merry Christmas!

First, take down your tree from the attic (we use fake), plug in your lights and begin fluffing. If your tree doesn't have lights, put as many as you can on it and remember to fluff those branches! The lights should be tucked in from deep inside your tree so that is can illuminate from the inside out. After that has been done, you are ready to decorate your tree. (side note, our children each have their own trees to decorate with all their lovely homemade treasures. In my house with 4 kids the girls have a tree and the boys have a tree!)

Okay, let the fun begin.

Step one, after you have fluffed and filled with lights add some netting. This can be found at Sam's Club for $6.99 or Martin's for $9.10. I believe Micheal's carry's

 it as well, but can't quote you the price. Mesh or netting can be done in two ways, one, wrap it around creating a downward motion or cut in pieces and create the same look without going around the entire tree. With a fake tree you can bend the branches and pinch to hold in place. With a real tree try to stuff inward so the netting or mesh and stay in place.

Step 2: Create your topper. For some of you who like the traditional angel or star on top of your tree you can do the same effect and replace the poinsettias in this picture with the angel or star. The fun of the top of your tree is to create a bigger impact by using branches or sticks that are decorated in sparkles or more natural decorative sticks if you prefer a more rustic look. With this look we took 3 large ornaments to use as our base, added 2 sparkly poinsettas from Martins and 3 red sparkly leaves from Mrtin's as well. We then stuck a lot of glittered branches or sticks coming out from the top. 

Step 3: Add some garland. This can be beaded, flowery, natural,  cranberries, etc. In this tree we used beads.

Step 4: Add some fillers. Fillers can be branches with leaves, flowered branches, feathers, Large decorative leaves, pine cones, etc. Here is what we used in this tree.

Place sparactically throughout the tree following your netting. Like this:

Step 5: When we collect ornaments, we like to collect different sizes and shaped. Too many balls can ruin a tree in my opinion. Using a variety can give your tree dimension and texture. Begin placing ornaments on your tree. One tip to creating a full looking tree is to decorate from inside the tree to the outer part of the tree. Don't be scared to stuff ornaments inside the tree and piling a certain branch with more than one ornament. Like this:

I like a full looking tree and try to put as many ornaments I can find onto my tree. I have a 12 footer and fill it from top to bottom. This tree in this picture is 6 feet. I even put larger decorative items in my tree. This year I have a chandelier on the very top! Here is how your tree will look if you follow this tips:

My sister's tree

My tree

Merry Christmas!