Well, it’s getting a little late to be posting this, but it is a tip you can still use.
You see, I have a bare old hairbrush of a Christmas tree, purchased when my wife and I were newlyweds living in Maryland. I cut off the bottom stump with a hacksaw so that I could put it on the end table and it’d be high enough that kids and cats would leave it alone. All that to say, you wouldn’t think it’d be very pretty. But it is, thanks to my pimpage.
How do I do this you ask? I assemble the tree. You can see it looks crummy, just like this:
In fact, you can see some of my daughter’s toys right through the sucker. You can also plainly see the color-coded bands that tell you how to put it together. Very bare indeed.
Did I tell you the reason I don’t get a real tree? I got tired of stuffing it into my Corolla. So back to the plastic one for reasons of economy and laziness. But I digress.
Next step is to put on the lights. Now, Martha Stewart tells you to wrap each branch in lights. I found that that might be good if your tree is 16 feet tall, but if your tree is smaller, it looks like a fireball that is descending from space to land in a doctor’s office in Virginia. You are forewarned. But if you must, you might want to try out those LED lights because you can string up like 150,000 lights on them without blowing up your living room. The LED lights look strange and otherworldly, also, which adds to the meteorite effect.
But I digress again. Seriously, putting the lights on right after you set up the plastic tree sets the stage for true pimpage, which involves: real evergreen branches. I cut some off of a cedar tree near my back yard.
Cedar is perhaps not the best choice. I usually wait for a storm to blow down fir branches and stick them in. But this year we didn’t have any land in our yard. So I chose cedar for the fact that its branches are low down to the ground where I can snip some easily. It’s doesn’t match all that well, but the effect works well. The rest is easy, just stick them right into the tree:
I’ll take a picture of the whole tree once I get my living room cleaned up. By the way, thanks to James, aka Seattle Dad, who kicked my butt to post again.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
We have friends who bought a fake christmas tree years ago. They decorated it on that first christmas, and it’s stayed that way every since. Instead of disassembling it every year like they should, they just drag it up to the attic, lights ornaments and all and wait for the next christmas! There are scratch marks all over the walls leading to the attic! HAHA
That’s funny. I know my sister does that too. I have a small tree for the downstairs that fits in one of those big tubs. I just stick it in there with everything on it. Works great, except there are always several things that fall off. I suppose you could wire everything down really well.
Indeedie I do.
Except this year we took the ornaments off before stuffing it back in the basement. The kids really like putting them on, so if they’re doing it, no skin off my nose.