whats your christmas decorating style?

[wfrances]

what colourscheme if any ?just a tree? a tree in every room?
what about the gardens and house exterior?
do you have a theme?
i love the rustic ,winter wonderland,nordic style.

[Pugless]

Mine is described in one word tacky

[bedmonster]

No colour scheme, girls take it in turns to pick a tree every year, the other chooses the wreath for the front door. Apart from doing the lights the kids do everything else.
I hate carefully coordinated colour schemes, I think it looks naff and and a bit staged in peoples houses. I love the haphazardness that is our tree!
Think it all stems from my youth when my dm would wait until we went to bed before doing the tree. She thought if would be 'magical' for us to wake up to. Truth was she is just a bit too much of a selfish control freak to let us have any input!
Different strokes for different folks though, would be very boring if we were all the same.

[MikeLitorisBites]

One big tree in front room, mostly colour coded but a few special decorations. A few lights and sticky things on the windows and couple of ornanaments.

Wrapping is done so that each person has specific paper. That was i dont have to write out a million tags.

[flyoverthegoldenhill]

Totally haphazard, and following on from the pintrest thread its going to be even more chaotic this year ! This year I will be putting a few things in the garden, just a few, and little, and ones I don't mind being knicked. I expect though there will be some mumsnetters who are totally anal colour co-ordinating and match everything to the nth degree.

[OstrichSizedShrunkenHeads]

Random and homemade. Hmm, I don't think that would sell any magazines.

We have one tree and random decorations on it that I've picked up over the years. Some homemade decorations around the house and we make a gingerbread house that DD helps with.

[buzzgirly]

Our house is also haphazard!!! We have multi-coloured baubles on tree, along with dd's home made things and we buy a new special tree decoration every year which dd chooses. Last year we acquired a Tinkerbell! We don't put tinsel on tree, but it goes on everything else in the house. I actually love it, it's very us!

This year we are in a new house so I am going to be getting something for the garden!

[notactuallyme]

Last year I decided to Do It Properly. I took down all the usual stuff, used runners and then put decorations out all in one colour scheme. Confined to sitting room only. One tree. Actually, you can all take the p in a minute, but it did look nice rather than previous years of draping bits of tinsel at random...

[Goldpippin]

We have a big real tree in the lounge and have a red and gold theme. The dining room is this year going to be a winter wonderland with lots of stuff the children make, lots of twinkling lights and a smaller tree that they decorate .

[ISeeThreadPeople]

The book Lucy and Tom's Christmas by Shirley Huges? I sort of have a vision of it being like that (Picture from the book here) and I do try hard to make it like that. Homemade is the key.

We live in a 100yr old house with a logburner and uneven floors (draughty, leaky, tough to decorate, cold old thing) and I try and make the Christmas decorations traditional/simple. We make our own out of dried oranges, cinnamon, holly, fircones, cloves etc. I have floristry wire and ribbons and pins and a willing 5yo. I even knitted a nativity a few years ago which is like this which sits on the sideboard and we always make paperchains, string up popcorn etc. I also have a bit of a thing for Christmas snowglobes (vintage ones, I've collected them for years) and they pop up around the house.

DH says Christmas is just another example of how I was born in the wrong decade. He's wrong. It's the wrong century if anything.

[ISeeThreadPeople]

Oh and we have a portal to the North Pole. I painted it on a bit of MDF a few years ago. It's a window looking out down a wintry lane which disappears into the middle distance. It goes up with the decorations. Christmas Eve I swap it for an identical painting. Except Father Christmas and part of a reindeer are disappearing round the corner. DD likes it anyway.

[GoldPlatedNineDoors]

We just have a tree, and stockings hung up. Our tree is fakey and decorations are from Ikea. Sort of quirky as the decs are black, white, red and orange. Lights on the tree and wrap my presents in brown paper with coloured ribbon. Though this year I found some black and white photo wrapping paper so they;; be in that.

Stockings hung up in bedroom.

I usually put the tree up on first of December but DD was born the week before Christmas last year, so I may have to keep the decs down til after her birthday from now on, so her brithday doesn't seem like 'meh' in comparison.

[Ambi]

Just a (fake) tree. Silver/ purple cheap ornaments with some special ones with our family names and from our holidays. No decorations in the living room as its DDs bday a week before and all her cards / banners go there, Xmas cards and tree in the back rooms.

[flyoverthegoldenhill]

Iseethreadpeople a portal to the North Pole - fantastic. I want one too sounds brilliant.

[TigerFeet]

Think explosion in a tinsel factory.
I love tinsel
It's the only thing that keeps me away from the poncetastic thread.

[missnappyknickers]

The house is a grotto but not tacky.lots of lights,novelty santas,snowmen etc,decorated porch,same colour theme through house,lit up decs on windows,6ft tree in bay window,mini trees in playroom and kitchen,garland on fireplace,blutack the cards on the double doors that lead to kitchen both sides,banister has a garland and have hall also decorated even the bedrooms get a bit of tinsel lol

[AstronomyDomine]

We only decorate the living room, mainly, with a wreath and old fashioned Father Christmas in the hallway. My tree has to go in the corner or the living room behind my suite on a box so is tall and thin. Colour code is, I suppose, dark red, gold,bronze but if I see something I like I'll add it to the tree regardless of colour. Lads of lights that twinkle a bit, star on top. Little nick nack ornaments on the fire-place with a garland (not lit). My son's advent calendar (pffft he's 17 but still wants the daily chocolate bless him . Bowls of sweeties around the place and a tin or two of biscuits.
It's been unchanged for over 10 years ... Can't be doing with the trendy blues and blacks I've seen over recent years.

[AstronomyDomine]

*loads of lights

Oh, and candle bridges on the window-sill.

[oohlaalaa]

We take our cheap chearful decorations out, and put them around the house. Nothing matches. I usually pick some holly, and put that over the picture frames.

My BIL has some mistletoe on his farm, and we hang some in the entrance hall.

This will be our first year with a baby, but baby is too young to appreciate christmas so we will not have a tree.

We have a tradition, that if we are entertaining over Christmas we have a tree. If we are not entertaining, DH buys me a bunch of red roses for the hallway.

Trees ere too expensive for us ever year. Next year we'll probably have a tree, as our child will appreciate it more, and then every year till they leave home.

[TerrorNotSoFrightened]

I have a 7ft tree, real garland on the mantelpiece,stockings are hung there also.
I suppose I do have a colour scheme, all wines, reds, golds and bronzes. As it goes with the colours in the living room, Clashing colours just irritate me in my house, don't know why.

I usually just decorate the living room, but am planning something for the hallway and staircase this year. Probably silvers as the hallway is grey and beige.

[Sunnywithachanceofshowers]

Tinsel. Tacky. Flammable.

:)

[VladIIIDracula]

We buy a massive real tree and decorate with a complete mixture of decorations: some inherited from grandparents and parents, some made by me when I was a child, some bought by ourselves (we buy a couple of new decorations each year, each has it's own memory of that year) and some made by DD.

Our tree lights are old coloured ones inherited from DHs parents.

DD makes various decorations out of whatever she can find. We usually have paper chains and lanterns hanging up and snowflakes stuck to the window. This year we're going to make a diarama (is that how you spell it?) of a winter wonderland out of a cardboard box and cotton wool and glitter.

We have a playmobil nativity scene that DD loves to set up. And a stocking each hanging by the fireplace.

Our house is tiny so there's not much room for anything else

[FoofyShmooffer]

70s disco.
Or
Tasteless tat
Or
Christmas at the local labour club.

Funnily all of these themes look exactly the same.

[Bertrude]

We usually have a massive real tree, think this year it'll be reds and golds, a 5ft fake one which is usually silvery and pale blue and winery colours. Have a couple of garlandy things too.

India yar I'm going to go totally over the top because I'm hosting for about 8 people plus a little one and we want to go crazy

[wickedfairy]

Red and gold on the tree in the living room and a green garland with white flowers and fairy lights over the mantelpiece

Dining room has same fireplace garland with a tiny, table top-size tree on the sideboard decorated with silver/gold.

Garland with red, poinsietta flowers around base of bannisters.

Fairy lights around the porch and front door, with wreath on front door.