Our Christmas Tree

Our family hasn't been too big on getting Christmas trees for the past decade or so. I think it's because we're afraid the dog will eat the needles and we're getting too lazy to want to clean up the needles and it's just not environmentally friendly to kill a tree so that the house looks good for a month.

Sorry to be such a grinch! But this year, I found a cute little substitution for a Christmas tree. My sister, her friend, and I made some fun ornaments, via Martha Stewart, and I wasn't sure what to do with them but I was inspired by Charlie Brown's Christmas tree. So I went outside and found a small pine branch and put it in a nice cylindrical glass vase filled with glass stones and marbles, added some lights (just piled into the vase, not wrapped around the branch), and hung the ornaments. I was pretty satisfied with the results.

close up of the ornament

pretty lights

lovely :)

I think it's an awesome substitution for a Christmas tree and I think it might make a great centerpiece for Christmas dinner.

I also like these magazine trees (via Martha Stewart again). I used catalogs that I got in the mail (I get countless catalogs from VS, Anthropologie, J.Crew, etc.) because it's a fun way to recycle them into something nice. Then I sprayed them with green glitter spray paint. I think seeing bits of color from the magazine pages is nice. I don't like the saturated gold color, the way Martha did it, but it's all about preference.

I wish this photo could do a bit more justice to just how sparkly and pretty the glitter spray paint turned out.

I'm trying to get in the Christmas spirit!