As I’ve been working on decorating for Christmas this year, I thought it would be fun to look at pictures of our “main” Christmas tree through the years. I am now wishing I had done that before I decorated our tree for this year, because I found so much inspiration from things I’ve done in previous years. I love it when that happens!
It was a little challenging to find pictures of Christmas trees from my early years of blogging, but I was able to find trees back to 2011. So, let’s take a little tour, and maybe you’ll find some new/old inspiration there as well…
2024
Other than a few minor tweaks, our tree is pretty much the same this year as it was last year. I’ll share a fresh picture of it, though, in its own post. This tree is the Balsam Hill 8′ Noble Fir. It was prelit, but the strands slowly died over the years and were too complex to fix or replace. (We really tried!) So, we cut off the lights three years ago and strung new lights onto each section, so it would still be easy to put up each year, and we could replace strands as they burn out.
The garlands are store-bought wool garlands, hand-made crochet bauble garlands (you can find the tutorial HERE), and hand-made dried orange garlands (you can find that tutorial HERE).
I also added LED clip-on candles (you can learn how I customized them HERE) and a lit star tree topper. You can find a similar one HERE.
I kept the ornaments simple, all silver and white. I hung my collection of over 60 Wallace silver-plated sleigh bells, mixed in mercury glass ornaments, crocheted snowflakes (tutorial HERE), salt dough ornaments (tutorial HERE), and some German glass glittered ornaments I’ve made over the years.
You’ll notice I have used the same tree skirt since 2015. I love it and have never even been tempted to replace it. You can read about how I made it out of antique linen toweling HERE.
2023
This tree was similar to 2024, but I used blue and green satin ribbons (which I moved to the dining room tree in 2024), strung the garlands a little differently, and used blue and brass ornaments in addition to silver. I also moved the bulk of the blue and brass ornaments to the dining room tree. The brass swallows are some of my favorite store-bought ornaments, and they are still available HERE.
2022
This was our first Christmas in our Maryland house, and it was a hard Christmas! My foot was still healing from being broken earlier in the year, we weren’t fully unpacked or organized, and the house was in the process of being renovated. I’ve learned over the years that the first Christmas in a new house almost always feels a little out of sorts! I didn’t bother with garlands or trying to figure out how to put a topper on an eight-foot tree in a room with eight-foot ceilings. I just put the lights and ornaments on and did the best I could.
2021
The Christmas decorating season of 2021 was one of my favorites. I started decorating and doing Christmas crafts in early November, and I had such a wonderful time doing it. This year, I incorporated the shells I have collected from our vacations to the Isle of Palms and dried Annabelle hydrangeas from the bushes I had planted just a few years prior. (You can read how I dried my hyrangeas HERE.)
I loved this tree, but it might be because I have such fond memories surrounding my time decorating it. I definitely need to dry hydrangeas next year to use in my tree next Christmas. I missed the boat on that!
2020
This year, I just used my blue, white, and silver ornaments and tried swagging two types of wool garland. Once was a wool pom-pom, and the other a chunky fingerknit garland.
You can also see that we made some changes to the living room this year. We replaced the carpet with hardwood floors and built box beams on the ceiling.
2019
2019 was similar to 2020, but I layered wool pom-pom garlands over wired velvet ribbon. The one thing that I missed the most from this tree is the Balsam Hill wooden village tree collar. It looks so German to me, and I loved it! I’ve had to keep it boxed up, though, because the kitties were chewing on it and breaking pieces off as they wrestled under the tree!
I still have it, and will try to use it one of these days again. They still play under the tree, but not quite as much as they did when they were kittens, so I might be able to get away with it!
2018
I realized 2018 and 2019 look almost identical, and then I remembered why. I had shoulder surgery in September of 2019, and I still didn’t have full mobility in my shoulder. I had to get my guys to help a lot more than usual, so I kept it simple and just repeated what I did this year.
This was our second Christmas in Minnesota, and we decided to try putting up the tree in a new location. As you can see from the previous years, this placement was a winner, and where we set up the tree each year until we moved.
Looking back, I definitely overloaded this tree with ornaments! You’ll see that 2017 was pretty sparse, so I went all out in 2018! When we moved to Maryland a few years later, I sold most of the store-bought ornaments that didn’t mean anything to me. I have enough Wallace Bells and homemade ornaments that I didn’t need them as filler.
2017
This was our first Christmas in our Minnesota house, and, as I said about our 2022 tree, I just did what I could with the energy I had available. This was also our first year with the artificial Nobel Fir. We had used live trees for several years, but after our 2106 tree didn’t make it until Christmas, I was ready to go back to artificial. I was invited to partner with Balsam Hill that year, so the timing was perfect. We’ve used this tree for eight Christmases and, despite having to replace the lights (which was inevitable), the tree still looks as great as it did on the first Christmas. It looks so real and beautiful, and I still love it. These trees are expensive, but I don’t think I would buy from anyone else.
As far as decorating, I didn’t pull out all of my ornament bins since we were in the middle of moving in and working on home projects. I used wool garlands, some simple ornaments, LED clip-on candles (my first year using those, too), and made some “ribbons” out of fabric. I felt like this tree had a bit of a 90s vibe, and I poked fun at myself about that when I shared it on the blog.
2016
This was the last tree in our PA house and our last live tree. It started to droop so severely just three days before Christmas that the garlands and ornaments were sliding off. I looked at it, practically in tears, and told Jeff we couldn’t have that tree for Christmas morning. We went back to the tree farm, and they sold us a second tree for $20 since our first one didn’t make it.
Despite the fact that this tree didn’t make it until Christmas, it was a great tree. It had a nice shape and was fun to decorate. I had a lot of milk-painted and glittered ornaments on the tree that year, along with some homemade ornaments from the boys.
2015
This tree was magnificent! It’s one of those trees that you pick out at the tree farm, and then you realize your perception of how big it is was totally off. This tree was so fat and big, but I loved it.
Because I loved the tree so much, I kept the decorations simple. Wool garland, and primarily white and silver ornaments that were a combination of handmade and store-bought. The tree topper was one I found at a thrift store and coated in German Glass Glitter. I used that star for years until it was blackened with tarnish, which will happen to some German Glass glitter pieces over time.
2014
We are now entering my paper phase, when I used sheet music and paper from old books to make most of my Christmas ornaments and decor. I made garlands, wreaths, tree toppers, banners, ornaments, and just about anything I could think of. I sold these pieces to help my fledgling business grow, and I used them to decorate my home when our budget was very tight.
If I remember correctly, 2014 was the last year I used most of these handmade pieces because they were starting to get ripped, folded, crunched, and crinkled after a few years of use. (I can still spot a few on the 2015 tree above.)
The beautiful thing about these paper pieces is that most of them were made from a huge stash of sheet music sent to me by several blog readers. I had come up dry on Craigslist and local sources, so I asked my blog readers if they could help me find more. Not only did they help, but I also received boxes, packages, and envelopes that, when stacked, were taller than me. I cried over that stack of materials, given to me by strangers who wanted to support my creative work and business. You can read that post HERE. I received all that paper in 2010, and I made thousands of ornaments, wreaths, toppers, bunting, and more from it for almost four years.
This was also the first year I used the thrifted/glittered star, and the last year I used the ruffled linen tree skirt, which was one of my first viral ideas.
2012
I could not find a picture of my 2013 Christmas tree except for one from Christmas morning. It was pretty similar to 2012 and 2014, though, so we’re not missing much. You can see in this tree that I was using one of my handmade paper tree toppers. I made dozens of those to sell over the years and didn’t keep one for myself! I also never made a tutorial! I’m going to make one again, and I will make a tutorial, because I still think they are so beautiful, and make such a visual statement for something made of paper.
2011
This picture is from the retail space I shared at Chartreuse in Frederick, MD, but I wanted to share it because you can see another paper topper, and some of the “wreath-style” paper ornaments I made and sold. Again, how did I make hundreds of those and never share a tutorial on the blog? I think I was just so busy at the time. I was working on the book, Inspired You, selling out of three retail spaces, posting every day on this blog, writing tutorials for HGTV.com, and my boys were three and almost five. I don’t even know how I did all of that! I do remember being tired!
The 2011 tree in our house, one of my lowest-budget trees ever, decorated mostly with paper, twine, cardboard, and glitter, was featured in Better Homes & Gardens Christmas Ideas magazine in 2012. They photographed the tree in early February, so I had to replace the original live tree we had for Christmas in the off-season. Here are some pictures from that article…
I totally forgot about that wreath, but looking back on it 14 years later, I think it’s pretty fantastic. I glittered metal oak leaves and plastic ball ornaments, then mixed them with paper cones and pheasant feathers. I think the wreath might’ve even been thrifted.
That sofa was given to me by my aunt, and I made the slipcover out of drop cloths. (As a note, I think drop cloth fabric has changed quite a bit since these! These were made of 100% woven cotton and were great for inexpensive sewing projects.)
I made tons of these paper wreaths to sell over the years as well.
Remember the bamboo tattoo mat? And that chandelier has traveled with us from Virginia (pre-blog) to Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Maryland. It’s in our current dining room.
Ah, such a fun walk down memory lane. Here are a few ideas I want to reuse next year… I want to make a paper tree topper, paper bunting, and a few other paper ornaments again. I think I’ll swap out the wool garland with ribbons next year, and tuck in a few dried hydrangeas. We’ll see what else lights a spark, but those are the elements that caught my eye and are definitely worth dusting off.