Friday, December 4, 2015

Chocolate & Gold Upgrade for the Living Room Tree (2015)

It's that time of year again, welcome to my holiday house!

If you remember my posts from last Christmas, you know that we have had three trees in our home. (Yeah, there are actually four now, but we'll get to that in the near future!)

Anyway, my trees are as follows:  The biggest in the living room holds our sentimental ornaments, the dining room tree is my chocolate and gold 'decorator' tree, and my kitchen tree is home to a whole lot of sweet treats.

I loved my trees as they were, but wanted to add a little bit of the chocolate and gold theme to my living room tree as well.  Why?  Well for one reason, our house has an open floor plan and you can see both the living room and dining room trees at the same time, so I wanted them to 'go' together.  And another reason...wait, do I really need a reason to decorate?  Nope?  Ok, great!  Moving on.......



Ready to go!

Here is the living room tree all fluffed out with garland and strung with lights.

(I'll be re-blogging this weekend with last year's garland and light tips)



First Up:  Snowflakes!

Remember the white snowflakes that I used to decorate for Baby Girl's Frozen themed birthday party?  I decided to recycle them into golden Christmas tree decor.

(You can click here to see these snowflakes in use at the birthday party)



Spray Paint


A little golden spray paint transformed these white snowflakes into perfect golden tree decor.



3D Action

Though I used the snowflakes in their flat form for the party, I decided to make them three dimensional for the tree.  All you have to do is pop off one of the 'branches' from each flake, and then slide two of them together.

You want to know what's great about large 3D ornaments?  They tuck right into the trees branches really easy!  I nestled them deep into the tree, right near my garland covered trunk.

Remember, the larger the ornament, the farther into the tree it should go.  They look a whole lot better that way, but I had another reason as well; I wanted the chocolate and gold 'decorator' ornaments to be a detail of this tree, not the main focus.  The mission of this tree is to display our sentimental ornaments ;)




Second Step:  Chocolate!

These bins of shatterproof ornaments can be found at Wal-Mart for around $5.  But it you are really lucky, you can find them after the holiday on clearance like I did.  I purchased each of these last January for $1 and stashed them in the garage.




Dollar Tree Gold

I picked up 6 of these medium sized golden ornaments from Dollar Tree to mix with the Chocolate ornaments from Wal-Mart.

(Total cost $6)




Mix & Match

I used pipe cleaners to combine two chocolate ornaments with one gold, then twisted them into a cluster.  By leaving the pipe cleaner tails in place, the clusters have an easy way to attach to the tree.  Just twist the pipe cleaners into place and your tree will look great!

Side Note:  I find this method to be a lot easier for ornament placement.  Yes it takes longer to twist pipe cleaners than it does to hang a ribbon or hook, but the ornaments do not move (or fall) until you take them down.



A Little More Gold

I loved the idea of the medium sized chocolate and gold clusters so much that I decided to make up some small plain gold ones as well.  I bought 4 sets of small gold ornaments, also from Dollar tree.

(Total cost $4)



String & Twist

I clustered these ornaments the same way that I did the chocolate and gold combination.



Variety

Even though they are all gold, I made sure to group three different textures per cluster.



Chocolate & Gold Ready to Go

With as many ornaments as I put together, there was still lots of room leftover on the tree.  That's good, cause we have a looooot of sentimental ornaments!



Under the Tree

I decided to amp up the chocolate and gold theme under the tree as well.  I already had a chocolate tree skirt, and had been using a gold one in the kitchen.  Since I now have a new kitchen tree 'skirt' (post coming soon), I decided to take the gold one and layer it under the living room tree.  I really like how it turned out!

And there you have it, a chocolate and gold tree upgrade for a total cost of $12!
I hope you enjoyed this holiday post, thanks for stopping by!
-Jennifer

© Jennifer Adams Flowers 2015

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