tinsel is out, yeah? so what am I supposed to drape?

[RoobyMurray]

My Christmas trees always look like I've covered them in glue and ram-raided Homebase.

I get that Naice baubles n shit is good. But what about the horizontal plane?

What's wrong with tinsel?

Juney, sorry to break it to you, but, it's out.

:( But I love tinsel... particularly wrapping it around my bobble for work!

What about those... beads?

I think a few strings of beads look good - as does a few twirly pieces of good quality, thick ribbon. The ribbon needs to twist artfully in places and be long enough to wind round the tree at least once.

This is officially the most poncy thing I have ever written on MN!

Thick ribbon twirling artfully is my best secret for filling out the innards of a scrawny tree .

You can make it twist up the tree a bit closer to the trunk and put baubles further out and it makes your tree look fancy. Ribbon with wire inside works best.

x-mas bunting ?
Paper chains?

I dont put tinsel on the tree, just lots of baubles, ginger bread men, beads and lights.

I don't do tinsel, but I do allow my dc's to have lamenta on their tree.

Yes I do know how poncy that sounds.

I always have the most untasteful tinselly non matching tree going. dd adds a new carefully chosen (by her) bauble each year. I love it - it's like a picture of our family life as it goes through the years

I've seen 'garlands' of acrylic chandelier style crystals, the octagonal ones. The ones I saw were only clear not coloured, nice if you are into a jewelled theme.

Have also seen reels of gold, red, silver, green or pearl coloured beads to drape around the branches of the tree.

How can tinsel be out? FFS Christmas is the tackiest, glitteriest time of year. How can anything be out? Load it on I say!

I always sit down and paint pasta with the kids before Christmas. We use gold, silver and copper paint. Fussilii is good, much better than Penne, but macaroni is a little old and tired. We tie it up with nice red ribbon, and drape the tree. We also like to make mini bunting.

we have loads of tinsel. We are hideously unfashionable

beads....erm that's it I think.

I hate tinsel. But my DC love it so now they have it to wrap round their rooms.

I have strings of tin hearts and mini gingerbread people. I don't like beads

We used to have tinsel and homemade decorations but dd1 banned them all last year and made us do a tasteful tree instead -soooo boring!

I used to have some dull gold beads for draping but dd banned those too. :)

horizontal plane here is beans and lights. has been for years. the only tinsel that was allowed to come near the tree when we were kids was 5 thin strands that were draped top to bottom on the tree.

Ds has a little tree that has stuff and lights no beans, no tinsel. less is more

beans? Was that a mistype?

I assume you don't mean Heinz!

Actually dried beans of different colours might look good strung on a thread.

sorry ladies, but i refuse to lose the tinsel! i have black, pink and silver for round the ceilings and over doors and pic frames, and plain silver for on the tree.

sorry it was a mistype. i did mean beads. although it appears that i managed to make the mistake twice

Who cares whats "in"? Unless the interiors fashion police are coming to yours for a Christmas party.

We have what we like. We like all our mishmash decorations from years of travel, inherited ones from deceased rellies, tat the DC have made over the years etc. None of it matches, its glorious, wonderful memories.

We also have white lights, silver sprayed giant allium heads and some tinsel. Nothing catches the light quite like tinsel. I have tried without ( can't bear beads personally, they look like necklaces to me ) but there just isn't the depth without. I think the trick with tinsel is silver only, not too thick and twisted around the inner branches so its not too in yer face, more a twinkly sensation nestling in the woods.

My old next door neighbour used to have a perfectly coordinated tree, all white and silver decorations, white lights sited in a very expensive white container. It looked beautiful, like a shop display one. To me, it also looked sad. No joy. But thats me.

my tree always looks as if the tinsel fairy had a nasty accident. The kids (6 foot teens) pile everything we have ever owned on it!
(in my secret heart I'd like a themed tree...)

What makes me feel better as I look at our mish-mash decorated tree (especially the gaudy lights that i sent my dh to buy about a week before Christmas, he went to the pound shop and bought the most revolting set of huge green and red lights!)

However, my friend in new york told me a story how he went to a very very fashionable party. The person holding it had gone to great lengths to import glass balls from Poland, all in themed matching colours on equally impressive gigantic tree. One of the models came out of the bedroom after putting her delicate nose into some white powder into the room, proceeded to trip on her fantastically high heels, and landed slap bang in the middle of the tree ... my friend told me all you could hear was the pinging and smashing of imported glass balls reverberating through the house

so back to our tree with said terrible lights, home made decorations and inherited baubles!

You could do the American thing and string popcorn?

Our tree is a mismatch. Old things, new things, homemade things, bits we have picked up on our travels. I cannot stand co-ordinated themes on trees, it is one of the things I'm a snob about

Tinsel is fab, those strings of beads are utterly chav-tastic - IMVHO [hwink]