6 Christmas DIY’s + Our Christmas Tree!

When I made my DIY Glitter filled ornaments, I promised that I would share our fully decorated Christmas tree with you.

I’m still going to do that, but the Martha Stewart-esque tree that both you and I anticipated didn’t exactly come to fruition.

That being said, I think it’s still a cute tree, considering it’s our first one. Also, I was able to DIY the ornaments, hooks, tree topper, tree skirt AND two kinds of Christmas gift tags which I’m going to share, so I think that makes up for it!

For the tree, we originally wanted a mini tree, but of all the trees that we found along the Danforth, they were either full sized trees, or Charlie Brown style trees. Needless to say, we went with the full size one.

It was wrapped, so we didn’t know exactly how it would look when it was unravelled, but it ended up being a decent shape. Also, it was only $20, so I wasn’t going to complain too much that it wasn’t perfect, and we weren’t able to go cut it down. I was just happy that it wasn’t a fake tree.

I had to buy the tree stand and the lights for the tree, since we didn’t have any from previous years. I originally wanted the old style white lights that have more of a warm glow, but apparently there were none to be found in Canadian Tire. Since I was in a pinch, and itching to decorate the tree, I went against my own better judgment, and bought white and teal LED lights. Now, if you’ve ever gotten  into a conversation with me about Christmas lights, you’ll know that I hate the new LED lights. With a passion. They seem cold, the colours are so bright that they hurt my eyes, and they’re just not warm Christmasy feeling colours. They just seem more like colours that you would use for a sign on any day of the year. I could go on and on, but I won’t subject you to more of my ranting.

Anyways, I bought the two lights and just decided to deal with it, but when I plugged in the teal lights they were green!! I was so mad! I got mildly excited about possibly having teal lights, and my dreams were crushed. It was back to the original white and gold themed tree. Since I only had one set of 70 white lights left, the tree looks a little bare. However, I decided that since I don’t love these lights, I’m going to return them before Christmas and scour the stores on boxing day to find the lights I’ll love. These will have to do for now.

The rest of the tree and gift wrapping is comprised of DIY’s that were inspired from other bloggers.

First off, we have the fur tree skirt from A Beautiful Mess. Mine isn’t quite as nice as the one Laura made because my fur isn’t exactly the same, but it still looks cute! I had this white piece of faux fur fabric that we kind of just used as a small blanket on the couch, but small pieces were always falling off and driving me nuts, so it was the perfect opportunity to make a tree skirt! As a bonus, there was some fabric left over, so I was able to recover one of our small pillows. Double bonus, my mom bought me the fabric a few years ago, so both little projects were essentially free 🙂 You can see glimpses of the tree skirt here:

Next, I needed those hooks to hang ornaments, but I couldn’t find any at the dollar store, as wasn’t willing to pay over $1 for them. SO, I realized that I had some wire left over from a project that I did in university and thought that I could make my own hooks with it. I used a sharpie and a pen to create the curves in my hooks, but if you have needle nose pliers, I’m sure it would be much easier. I started by putting my sharpie on top of the wire, leaving about 1cm on top of the Sharpie like so:

Next, I used my thumb to twist the wire around the sharpie, creating my first loop for hanging on the branch of the tree.

Once you’ve got the first loop, you need a smaller sharpie, or pen like I used, to create the loop that the ornament gets threaded through. Repeat the same steps as you did creating your first loop. Help from your cat is optional.

You should end up with a hook that looks something like this! I made nearly 35 for my ornaments, but have a ton of wire left for when I get more ornaments next year!

Third, Tash and I made these little clay ornaments last year, inspired by this post. She used hers as gift tags, as the blog suggests, which is a great option too. We branched out a little and used scrap pieces of lace as well as evergreen branches to imprint the surface with to give them more of a holiday theme. We also chose to so stars, Christmas light bulbs and circles instead of hearts. I especially love the evergreen ones!

Fourth is my DIY Gold Glitter ornaments. You can find my full tutorial here!

For my fifth DIY, Tash and I made these clay tags this year to use as gift tags for Christmas presents. We were inspired by this blog post and decided to do more of a Christmas theme to keep things festive.

Lastly, keeping with Christmas tags, we made these little origami santa’s last year following this tutorial. We also branched out a little bit and used different colours of papers to create elves. I also tried to make a Mrs. Clause by making the bottom look more like a skirt as opposed to legs and using a more pink colour of paper. The tutorial suggests putting them on white card stock and writing to and from on the bottom, but I just ended up writing the persons name on the white portion of the tag.
Overall, this is how the finished tree came out looking with some silver geometric ornaments and a couple gold glitter pieces of holly throughout the tree. We completed it with a bow as a tree topper since I didn’t have time to make a star this year.

We completed our Christmas decorating with glittery white Christmas tree candles for the island, a Christmas card from Ben and Tash and an ornament that my friend from the bakery got us last year as a secret Santa gift! Also, guess who love sleeping / hiding under the tree?

I think we’ve got a decent start to our Christmas decorating! Next year the plan is definitely to work on decorating the tree better and maybe to make a big festive sign, or maybe a wreath for the door.

What’s your favourite part of decorating for Christmas? Do you try to DIY some of your holiday decorating? Let me know 🙂

xo, tess.