This year my theme for Christmas is music. I decorated my tree with white and black ribbons. I happened to have both ribbons on hand. I wrapped the black ribbon over the white ribbon because the white seems to stick out and black recedes. I just taped them together to make a garland.

I got my family to help me make the decorations after dinner on Thanksgiving. I had an old, paperback book about Christmas that had the music to carols in the back. I ripped them out of the book and my family helped me roll them up, tie them with black ribbon and attach hooks to make them Christmas ornaments.

The tree trunk and scrolled music ornaments my family helped me make.

I used all of my music themed ornaments and the gold ornaments on the tree. I even took down the large French horn that I had hanging on the wall downstairs and hung it on the side of the tree facing the street.

I used a black and white “throw” with piano keys on the edges as a tree skirt. I topped the tree with a homemade angel that was made for me years ago by my friend, Rosemary.

My 2012 Christmas Tree

I have always had an artificial tree because of my allergies and asthma.  I want it to look like a real tree and I thought I would share some of the tricks I have used over the years.

1. Since branches grow up toward the light, not horizontally, I bend each branch toward the light. (As my room is small, I bend all of them up to keep the tree from taking much floor space.)
2. I take a long fake evergreen garland and loosely wrap it around inside the tree to camouflage the metal prongs that hook the branches into the trunk.
3. (New for 2012) I took the center of a roll of wrapping paper, (not the tube, but the rolled butchers-type paper), and taped it to a table. After Thanksgiving dinner, I had the artistic guests draw knot holes on the paper and we colored it a variety of colors to resemble a tree trunk.  I cut it to fit between the tree stand and the bottom row of branches and wrapped it around the tree trunk. I cut the rest to fit the spaces between rows of branches and pulled it tighter as I went up the tree trunk to make it appear to get smaller in circumference.
4. One year, I left one of the larger branches off of the tree to make a hole. I put a large Christmas ornament in the hole.  Most real Christmas trees do not have perfect branches all the way around it.
5. When I put the tree together, I noticed the top seemed to lean a bit to the side. As real trees do not grow straight up, I left it alone.

Last year I wrapped the trunk of the tree with foil to reflect the lights. This year, since I added a fake tree trunk, I hung shiny, gold globes next to the trunk to reflect the lights.

I am already considering my theme for next year. I want to buy the ornaments when they are on clearance after Christmas.