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White Christmas


The recent winter storm blanketed parts of the country with white snow including some parts of California, Nevada, and Texas. I live a few miles from the San Francisco International Airport and this part of the Bay Area is really cold. Santa Cruz mountains and Oakland hills were unbelievably capped with snowflakes.. It's Winter Wonderland in California!?
This was an inspiration in decorating our Christmas tree this year. My daughter and I agreed on this theme and she had her first hand in decorating a Christmas tree from buying the fresh tree to putting the last ornament. Inspiring her to hone her decorating skills, she was designated the one in charge of decorating the house, the Christmas tree, and buying gifts for everyone, in preparation for Christmas.

I advised her that her taste will improve through the years and that she should develop an "eye" for fine art. I encouraged her to read books and magazines related to interior design i.e. Architectural Digest, House Beautiful, and any reading materials featuring the latest trends in style, color, and design.

She went out in the cold with a friend the other night and bought a towering fresh pine tree which gave our small house a Chrismas smell in the air. We went to a craft store to check out some items we needed, unique ornaments, and rolls and rolls of white silvery ribbons. The color we chose were all white, silver, and some light grayish tones. We were going to have a White Christmas.

Here are some tips to decorate your Christmas tree:
  • Choose a theme and a color scheme to work on, or go for the traditional tree, which could bring the memories of the Christmas past.
  • Get all your materials ready: tree, ornaments, lights, garlands, ribbons, star, etc.
  • Put the skirt under your tree before you start decorating.
  • Start putting the lights first. Some start from the bottom going up but I prefer starting from the tip of the tree going down. ( I prefer decorating my tree at night and I keep the lights on while I'm working on the tree.)
  • Put the ornaments, the ribbons and the garlands. Normally I put the garlands at the end, but because the garlands we used for our Christmas tree were made of different sizes of ice beads or chunks of ice-like heavy material, we positioned them next after putting the lights
  • On the top of the tree, you can put a star or any of the materials you use for your theme. Sometimes, I just make a big bouquet of ribbons on top of a tree, or an angel, or whatever is the theme.
  • Wrap your gifts with unique wrappers with stripes, big dots, plain color, poinsettia, adorned with interesting ribbons and simply made with a nice bow or neatly curled ribbons.
  • Unless you're decorating someone else's tree, I think decorating your own tree is personal. Use your own creativity and style.
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