Christmas tree decorations - help please

[thereistheball]

I am decorating a tree for the first time this year. It will be a smallish real tree. So far I have a few quite tasteful baubles that will probably be underwhelming when I come to put them up. How can I introduce some tack festive cheer?

So far I have:

These white procelain bells
These mini transparent glass baubles
and four big clear glass baubles a bit like this

I am giving tinsel a miss but do want masses of white lights.

I live in France so all suggestions need to be online purchases or available over here. Salt dough decorations aren't an option as I don't have an oven.

What would you add to this lot?

Oh, and I've got 4 of these 'antique ribbed baubles

They all look lovely. Do you only want a silver / white / clear colour scheme?

John Lewis has lots of nice ones!

Thanks. It's not deliberate - I am just a bit nervous of colour, I think. I'm hoping that I can't go wrong with gold, silver and white.

If I were to have a theme at all it would be birds.

To that end I've just bought these ones which look really nice.

I have also found these clear glass birds from John Lewis that I'm almost certainly going to get aswell.

Have you seen the Mrs Christmas website?

She has many beautiful things, most of which I can't afford - but worth a look

btw the birds look a bit heavy - make sure you place them towards the trunk of the tree, or they will fall off/weight it down.

Very sweet though!

MrsChristmas

Thanks. There's some lovely stuff on the MrsChristmas site - I am going to have to step away from the 'order' button soon.

I hope you haven't got young children / animals with all those beautiful glass baubles

One 3 year old DD. I'm hoping she'll be careful with them!

It may look a bit sad without any colour. I'd go for these and these which tie in with your antiqued ribbon ones from WC. There's a 25pc off code floating about somewhere if you're interested.

Don't put precious baubles on tree if you have dc!!

I put all my luxury glass etc type baubles away after they attracted too much attention and ....smash....

Have lots of non breakable ones (wire, metal bells, fabric etc) now instead. One day I will be able to have my lovely glass ones out again...

Very few of my precious baubles have been broken by my DC - I have broken nearly all of them myself!

I put the very precious ones high up. DD (4) helps decorate and only fills the branches she can reach, so I give her appropriate decorations to hang at her level. DS (7) can reach a bit higher but isn't really interested in them any more.

For me, it wouldn't be Christmas without my special decorations, and if a few get broken, then its a good excuse to buy a few more each year, to make future memories.

House of fraser's own Linea range have some lovely decs.

www.houseoffrasaer.co.uk

I love the Cox and Cox ones and have found some really nice bird ones at HoF too. Thanks!