The Christmas tree in the guest room has a silver and blue theme, with a lean toward a vintage feel. The tree has white LED lights that have a bluish cast. The tree rotates. So much prettier in person, but you get the idea. By the way, this is the tree I spray painted last year. Worked great!!

You can see more Christmas decorating ideas at The Inspired Room. Scroll down that page for links to other sites where homes are being readied for the holidays.

~~Rhonda ::busy decorating the living room tree today::

I used shiny silver spray paint and a fine glitter in “antique silver” color.

I experimented on a small piece of garland, trying three different colors. Once I moved on to the tree, I started at the top.

I worked in sections. As I sprayed a small section, I sprinkled it with glitter before it dried.

I love the way it turned out. The green has been muted and the shiny silver lightens the entire tree.

I used white LED lights on the tree. The color is very white and looks better with the blue/white room than the incandescent lights that glow with a yellow cast.

Genny and I tried some silver icicle stands on the tree and I think it will be the perfect finishing touch. Now I need a tree skirt…

2011 update…here’s the tree this year. Still looks great!

~~Rhonda

If you don’t know already, I *love* Christmas and everything about it. I love the decorating, the entertaining, the cooking…every detail. Here’s a little preview of what’s coming.

The living room tree is a 9′ tree that sits on a 24″ box. The ceilings are 12′ high. The tree rotates. Years ago, I found a heavy duty revolving tree stand. I have searched the internet and cannot find the same tree stand available any longer. Ones that *are* available couldn’t handle such a large and heavy tree. The stained glass angel in the window is a gift from our dear friends Gary and Laurie and hangs in the window year round. Gary made the angel and other stained glass pieces in our home.

If you’re here at Christmas time, peek inside the living room tree to find the wood gnome who hides inside.

The main tree in the dining room is decorated with snowball ornaments and is covered with shredded artificial snow.

This tree sits in the bay in the library and holds a large collection of nativity related ornaments. It’s wound with a ribbon on which I wrote the Christmas story from Luke 2:1-20. I used gold fabric paint and wired satin ribbon.

A favorite last year, of course, was the grandbaby tree. This tree was a lot of fun to make. Dear friends gave us a “grandpa / grandma” gift of a diaper bag, two soft blankets, little socks, bath scrubbies, etc., and I used those to decorate the tree along with cards we received and photos of the twins and family.

The tree in DD#2′s room last year was decorated with stamped felt ornaments, wooden stars, and bows. This year, I’ll add some of DD’s own photographs and copper colored balls.

The little tree in the laundry room has a garden theme. BTW, that wallpaper is no more.

My favorite tree is the “glass tree” in our bedroom. I collect spun glass and glass ornaments and they go on this tree. I dismantled several chandeliers and use the prisms (about 250 of them) on this tree along with the crystal chains as garlands.

That’s just a small taste of what’s in store. We will have at least one tree in every room of the house. And that doesn’t count trees like DD’s “I Spy” tree…

Even the mice are decorating a tree.

And you may get a Christmas tree for breakfast!

You can click on any of the pictures and it will take you to my flickr site where you can see pictures of our other trees.

Christmas decorating is usually well underway by now because we have to have it all ready by the first of December for our annual open house. We are definitely going to fall behind schedule this year because of our remodeling projects, but I’m sure it will all come together in the end. Reviewing some of our pictures from previous years gives me a taste of what’s ahead. I can’t wait to get started in earnest!

~~Rhonda

The garland is simply silk flowers (red and white carnations and roses) cut apart and tucked into the branches, in a long spiral all the way down the tree, with a garland of ivy. The ivy and the lights stay on the tree during storage.

To store the flowers, I put them in a plastic bag. They are placed on top of other items in the storage box and I haven’t had any problems with crushing. They look fine each year.

I made the picture ornaments on the tree. Some are decoupaged onto balls.

In this picture, you can clearly see how the edges of the pictures are clipped to make them fit the curve of the ornament. That’s a pawpaw blossom above the butterfly, BTW.

Some ornaments are simply printed, cut into circles and laminated.

DD#3 on the wood chip pile. It’s springtime…the bridal wreath spirea is blooming. They always remind me of home. We had the same kind of spirea along the driveway.

We collect hostas. This particular one has beautiful variegation.

Weeding. A perpetual occupation, though not necessarily for DD#3.

The balls are stored in a plastic bag. I put tissue paper around the picture ornaments and the rest (all green) are just plopped in the bag with the wrapped ones.

The storage box for the downstairs bath…the plastic bag on the left has the silk flowers, the one on the right has the ornaments. Other items in the box…the fabric for the tree skirt, a tin (to the right of the pillow) containing a small five piece glass nativity for the bathroom counter, the bubble light night light wrapped in red tissue paper, a pillow from the wing chair in the laundry room, and a wheelbarrow decoration from the laundry room.

After finishing the bathroom, I also put away what remained of Christmas in the laundry room. The small garden tree in the laundry room had been removed a few weeks ago, so there wasn’t a lot to store.

I “unwrapped” our children’s baby pictures in the hall and put away everything on the hall counter opposite the pictures except the grandbaby tree. That will stay up for a few more weeks.

Last evening we had our 4H meeting here which was good incentive for putting away this part of Christmas. Takes me a long time to get it all put away, but I don’t mind.

~~Rhonda

I didn’t know I could use tinsel on an artificial tree until my sister Margaret told me five or six years ago that she always uses it on her own tree. We had a cut tree in the living room until I found that out. Then we went to artificial, which I had wanted to do for some time as we decorate so early and leave the tree up so long. I had stayed with using a cut tree so I could use tinsel.

In this picture, I’ve started taking the tinsel off the bottom of the tree…grabbed it by handfuls, saved some just because it came off so well, and the rest went into the trash.

After the tinsel was removed, I took off the ornaments. I store plain balls in a cardboard box without wrapping them in tissue. I’ve never had a problem with this method. I used a storage box lid to hold the other ornaments as they were removed. Then they were carried to the dining room table where they were sorted.

At the table, I had a lid for each of the three kids and for my and DH’s ornaments. When they came from the tree, I sorted them onto the ends of the lids…DD#3 at the far end, then DD#2, DD#1, and DH and my ornaments at this end of the table. After sorting all the ornaments I had carried from the tree, I stopped long enough to wrap the ornaments in tissue paper and place them into cardboard boxes which were also sitting on the storage lids. Each cardboard box has the name of the child whose ornaments are in that box. They have always enjoyed putting their own ornaments on the tree, so I have always kept them stored separately.

I don’t wrap unbreakable ornaments with tissue. I like to have a box or two of ornaments I can hand to children who want to “help.” They like having an entire box of ornaments they can put up without constantly being told “be careful!”

I did tier one – what I could reach sitting down, and tier two – what I could reach standing up. DH did tier 3 – what had to be reached from the ladder. BTW, we love our Little Giant ladder! It’s a wonderful tool for “this old house.” I gave it to DH for Christmas several years ago and we are constantly commenting on how glad we are to have it.

Once the ornaments were removed, we took the red beads and the popcorn and cranberry strings off. The beads are stored in a large zippered storage bag. They are thrown in together and never tangle, so they are easy to store. The popcorn and cranberry strings are pitched. We tried putting them outside for the birds a few times, but never found any interest in them, so now we throw them away.

Then it was time to remove the lights. Most years, we remove the lights from the lower four branches, remove the branches for storage in black bags (because the tree is too wide to fit through the attic door otherwise), and leave the rest of the tree intact. This year, we removed all the lights because many of the strings are old and fading. They need to be replaced. We were able to buy the commercial grade of light strings after Christmas for 75% off. A great deal and we will use those to replace the lights on this tree and the library tree next year.

I wrap the lights around my hand and store each string in a plastic shopping bag. I begin wrapping at the female end (the end without the prongs) so the male end (prongs) are on the outside of the roll. That makes it easy to plug the string in next year to check it, without unwinding the entire string.

This year, we took the tree completely apart, then replaced the branches. Some were obviously out of order (not sure how that happened!) which gave the tree an odd shape. As we removed each layer, I lined up the bundles in the front hall, with layer #1 at the front door and coming down the hall in order. We checked each layer to be sure all the branches were there and that all the branches in each layer matched. Now the tree is in good order and looks better.

With the tree down, DH was able to remove the window garlands and that was the end of “undecorating” the living room.

This is the two foot tall box DH made for the 9′ tree to stand on. The round things are sliders which make moving the tree across the floor very easy.

And now the living room is back to “normal.” It looks bare after all the decorations are removed, but now we’re ready for our 4H meeting tomorrow evening!

~~Rhonda

One storage box is an ornament box, which holds most of the tree’s ornaments. The plain glass balls are stored separately in a plastic sack. I don’t bother wrapping each one of those. Balls with decoration or glitter go into the ornament box, without wrapping. Fragile ornaments are wrapped with tissue paper and placed around them to keep them from shifting.

Unbreakable ornaments are not wrapped in tissue paper before being placed in the ornament box for storage. Small ornaments are tucked into leftover spaces.

The other boxes hold the plastic bag of plain balls, a bag of silk flowers for the tree, tulle for under the tree, the three trees for the top of the bookcase, etc.

We have a lot of wreaths in the house during the holidays. This one decorates the door to the guest room. It will be covered with a white garbage bag and hung in the attic until next Christmas.

There are three trees left on the first floor. Tomorrow, I will start taking down the big one in the living room. ~~Rhonda