Naff or co-ordinated tree?

[DreamTeamGirl]

I just wondered what sort of tree people have
Mine is a mad ECLECTIC mix of decorations that have built up over the last (ahem) 21 39 years.

I have little glass hanging ones that I picked up in Bruges when I was about 6, 1 of three angels that were bought for my parents the year I was born (my mum has the other, the 3rd got smashed), some little wooden ones that I got bought the year I bought my first home and so on and so forth.

I knew XP and I werent right together when he looked appauled at my tree and said he prefered trees to have a single theme colour, but i just find designer trees a bit ... soulless? TBH.

They DO look lovely, but I love the history that goes with mine and being able to tell DS a little story about each & every decoration.

So whats your tree like? Are you classy or sentimental?

Ooh- I'm with you! I love naff. I buy a couple of new decorations every year and refuse to throw out any old ones, so every year my tree gets more and more cluttered, and I love it!

Designer trees remind me of department stores, and make me feel a little sad inside, for some reason!

I have a weird collection..manyy vintage aand antique ones which this year I wont be getting out. DD is 2 and will crunch them in her hand if she sees them!

I am going for a "natural" folky tree...I am getting a small fat one...alive in a pot...baking biccies and making decos from felt and fabric......we will use natural colours with red, maybe some turqoise white and silver...but I am not a colour Nazi and if DD makes me a nice cotton wool snowman he will go on too!

Pre children mine were colour coordinated, symertrical and non single decorations, all sets, and you're eight, possibly a little souless. Now I let the children decorate it, I just do the lights. Looks much better and has all sorts of crap on it, stuff they've made, Lego, chocolates, random baubles etc. It really does look better though, amazingly.

Right!

Naff all the way. Mismatched, piled on, home made...love it

My tree is decorated in red and gold, but with a wide variety of shapes and textures; round, stars, onion baubles, icicle shaped. There are matt and shiny, spiky and smooth, jewelled, sequinned, pine cones, fabric, metal. I usually buy odd numbers if more than one dec in the same style.

There are old and modern styles, and some that remind me of places I have been which don't match exactly, but that won't stop me putting them on the tree. The general effect is of a collection of many years, not conforming to the trends of this particular season, but pleasing to me. I guess I'm trying to say it's possible to have a co-ordinated scheme that doesn't seem so, because of the variety of decs on it. And I do pile them on! Nothing worse than minimal, it needs to look full and rich.

We are now an adult household, but when DS was small, the tree had tinsel and decs made by him on it, as well as candy canes and hanging chocs. The other decs had to be of the non breakable variety! (Not just because of DS, but because the cats liked to pull them off and play with them.)

We go for the 'family heritage' look - it's all stuff we've accumulated over the years.

We have some pictures of baubles that DD cut out of the CBeebies magazine and coloured in 4 years ago, they appear on the tree every year. They look awful and probably need to retire (not helped by the smug faces of the Koala brothers on the reverse).

Where's the joy in a symmetrical, colour coordinated shoplike tree?

For us, its all about memories - past and creating new ones. We buy at least one new decoration each year, and have many from years of travels, and inherited from dead grandparents, and lots of course the DC have made at preschool and kindergarten, and now school.

I am itching to get them out and just look at them all........!

I found the tactful way to sideline certain decs was to give the DC a small tree of their own to decorate. That way they can retire items when they are ready to let them go. You'll find as they get older and better at making things, the new items will take pride of place on 'their' tree.

Totally sentimental. Basic decs are old and worn baubles from Woollies from our (DH & I) very first Christmas together. Children each choose one each year, plus gift deccies from friends/family.

DC's now at secondary and have forced us to retire the pre-school and infant school homemade decs as they find them embarrassing but tbh we're running out of tree space anyway and our trees are getting bigger every year

Designer trees - bah humbug

We have basic tasteful decorations in unified theme (red and white) but add more random eclectic decorations selected by the DCs each year, so it is gradually becoming more individual.

Nothing classy about a co-ordinated tree IMHO. Could be in the Next catalogue = naff.

But then, I love coloured lights, which I admit ARE naff.

I let DS choose all the decorations for our tree. They are naff. Green and gold (and cheap) because they're his favourite colours. He adds to it with tat he makes at school (and I'm sure DS2'll be producing tat at nursery soon).

Given the choice, I'd probably go with some souless, decorative tree. But that's not really the point. It's a family effort and my family enjoy making our tree naff. DH aspires to making the whe house as naff as possible but then gets all stingy when he realises how much it'd set us back in tinsel.

I'm pushing for a real tree this year though. We have the space and no crawling babies. I want a house that smells great.

The naffer the better IMO.
My tree could tell a thousand stories, with homemade decorations which the dc made at nursery/school, really old ones passed down from my Mum/Nan and some newer ones bought over the years.
I hate coluor co-ordinated trees with no character, and I really hate white christmas trees!!!

'Tasteful' trees are the ultimate in naffness.

We used to have a silver and white theme. This lasted until we moved to Oman where we got what we could. DD loves christmas and, although she gets a bit embarrassed about them, is secretly proud that we still have her decs she made at school. My particular favourite is a foam ball painted brown and with a few patches of tinsel on. She told me it was reindeer poo when she brought it home. Looks more like Rudolf's bollock TBH.

We have a semi co-ordinated tree. Starts off with the normal decs and then we have the ones the DC have made and the ones they have chosen each year (every year they pick a new decoration)

pmsl at Rudolph's bollock

Ours is somewhere in between. Not soulless like the trees you see in the next catalogue, but it does have only white lights and a vague colour scheme and all decorations are handmade. Luckily children's handmade stuff fits in quite well.

We make stuff for the tree together and they help decorate on the 23rd so I don't feel I'm being too precious in not allowing tat on the tree.

Yy a co-ordinated is naff (as in the kind of tree you might see in a shopping centre).

I have a vague rule of buying white or red decs. On top of that goes a multi-coloured selection of my childhood decs, all my kids decs. Sometimes we make biscuits to hang on it. Also 40 year old tinsel and so on. It is a thing of beauty.

Really interesting to read, and glad I am not alone in eclectic decorating

Tyler Don't know how old yours are, but purely out of interest from someone uncoordinated in every respect (not just trees!) what would you do if one of your DC arrived with some 'tat' demanding it go on the tree?

I was brought up with a co-ordinated tree and have continued to do so so but this year I may start phasing out the co-ordination and add in DS' selections of junk :o

Nothing my children make is tat

By tat I meant plastic crap, stuff fashioned out of toilet rolls and cotton wool is fine.

I have a rough colour scheme and ornaments are generally made out of paper, or wood, or natural stuff like pinecones, but no rules about two of everything or symmetry. I think there's a middle ground between coordination and throwing everything on without looking.

We have a blanket over the window instead of a curtain so I'm by no means a super coordinated person

Ours is an haphazard mis-mash of colour and mayhem and we LOVE it. Lots of bits from when I was a child plus newbies we buy each year - lovely!!

We can always give really special things to grandma