Artifical Trees

[BelleCurve]

Hi - I need to buy a new artifical tree this and would like a pre-lit one to avoid DS pulling the lights off. Green or with snow effect, ideally 6ft and budget under £100. Any ideas where I can get the best value? Thanks

Do you really need an artificial one?

Real ones smell soooooh lovely.

Pre-lit puts up the price by quite a lot. Iwish has a point about real trees, even if they don't smell that much they can be a bit prickly to the touch and put DC off fiddling with them.

Homebase had a half price offer on all artificial Christmas trees and lights, I don't know if it's still on. I think your best bets are to look around garden centres, or even buy online, because there hasn't been anything this year that I've thought "ooh that's gorgeous!" The only ones I did think this about are on Haysgardenworld.co.uk.

The prickliness of real trees has put me off them entirely, I have sole responsibility for putting ours up and taking it down every year and I'm sick of shredded hands. We're going fake this year, DH can get himself a scented candle if he needs the smell that badly!

I've ruled out prelit, they're too pricey and we usually have 512 tiny lights on our real trees - I can't find a prelit fake one that would be glittery enough for me!

Next have some nice ones - I particularly like the soft look of this one. Haven't seen it in person yet though.

M&S have a 6ft pre-lit tree with mostly good reviews. Think we're going with that this year.

I want to get this one, we usually get real but the last couple of years they've been crisp by christmas day :(

Sold out though....hope they're getting more in!

izzy, could you get the 5'5'' one if the 6' doesn't come back into stock? It looks very good, we have the dunhill fir 5'5". This will be its' ninth year. I'm hoping not to get another for a very long time as it is such good quality.

Homebase have trees half price here

izzybiz thanks for that link. We always have a real tree, but the kids insist on it going up on 1st of December and it's usually dead by the 15th with me desperate to take the darn thing down! All of the fake ones I have looked at just look awful but these look a great compromise :)

I bought a pre-lit, natural-looking, (not fibre-optic) and it turned out the lights were just wrapped around the branches as you would do them yourself. It turned out to be a bit of a pain because there were 4 sections of tree and 10 light circuits. I can only pluck up the courage every 2 or 3 years to put it together.

Make sure the design is what you want.

I bought one from Homebase about 4 yrs ago. It cost about £140 but it came with decs too (although we bought our own decs). It still looks lovely now and all the lights still going strong. Easy to put together too!

Was it a homebase one MTG? That seems to be one of the complaints of the HB one which is disappointing.

No, I got mine in Costco. It is enormous (well, 9ft).

Good God!!!! 9ft!!!!

9ft? Wow!

Where do you put it?

In our bay window - it fills it and overspills into the main part of the room. It is beautiful in all its symmetry and perfection though. Just an unbelievable chore to get it down from the attic and set up.

Do you lie it down?

One of the benefits of an artificial tree is that it is quite amenable to being upright.

I have many funny memories of real trees falling down at inoportune moments.

mindthegapp you reminded me of last years antics in our house. I had rose tinted images of us all laughing merrily whilst dh put up the tree and we all listened to Christmas carols. Instead dh completely lost his head, the effing tree wasn't straight and kept falling over and after much effing and jeffing later I swore we would never have a real tree again! Plus the damn thing was dead 2 weeks later!!

That's why we alternate between real and artificial. The memories of each are too raw the following year. They have mellowed 23 months later.

I will have a look in Homebase and report back. Thanks

Oh thanks belle that would be great. I think we'll buy our tree this weekend too.

Not very impressed with homebase tbh. I think I will just get the old one down from the loft and if has completely had it then will probably get a real one.