O Christmas Tree

True story: we've never had a Christmas tree. (we as in, Brad and I alone). This is largely due to the fact that we've always traveled to see my family during that time and it wasn't worth the effort.

This year I put a stop to that. It will be our first time with just the two of us on Christmas, and it just wouldn't feel the same without a tree.

My friend had one in her attic that she wasn't using so I happily accepted and began scheming all the different ornaments and garlands and decorations I'd fill it with.

Well, turns out the tree was about 1/3 the size I was visualizing, so I had to scale down my plans a bit.

The tree is little but it's cute, and it's ours. Our very first tree:



For the ornaments, I made a bunch of yarn poms one night. The little ones went on my mantel tree and the big ones I saved for this tree.

I had pinned several more DIY ornaments to make, but the poms filled the tree pretty well, and I just couldn't find the time. So those will be reserved for next year.

To fill in the tree some, I picked up 30 feet of burlap ribbon (50% off at Hobby Lobby) and draped it like so:

It helped it look a little less Charlie Brown-ish.

For the tree topper, what else is more fitting in our house than a starfish?

I grabbed a smaller one I had lying around, applied some hot glue to the back and twisted a paperclip to secure it.

I wanted to give the small tree some height, so I propped it up on a wicker ottoman from Ikea:

And finally, the tree skirt.

After seeing them everywhere on Pinterest, I decided to go with a no-sew ruffle skirt. But first I needed a base. I found a 41" generic felt skirt at the Dollar Tree (for, you guessed it, $1):

Then I headed to Hobby Lobby to pick up some burlap (the same material that I used on the Merry garland on my mantel)

Sadly... they only had 1.25 yards left. Yikes. I took a chance and bought it anyway, because this was yesterday afternoon and I was determined to finish the project that night. I also bought some plain white fabric in case I needed a plan B and had to alternate rows with burlap/white ruffles. I really wanted it to be all burlap though.

I ended up with about 5.25" for the width of each strip (which meant no fabric was wasted)

After cutting everything out and doing a quick test fit, I realized that I was short. Which meant I had to go easy on the ruffle volume, and make them more of a pleat.

Because I had no room for mistakes, I measured and marked my rows on the felt (5 rows total):

I figured this would take a while, but it actually went by super fast. And easy. Here's the first row completed after just a few minutes:

And the finished product:

So there you go... something a little different than your standard ruffle skirt.


Here's the daytime/lights off look:

And with the lights on, different times of day/night:

I have no idea what's up with all the green dots. They are not there in person, it's a weird lens reflection thing. Any smart camera people out there?

And there you have it!  Next year I'll step it up a notch and get an adult sized tree, but I really do love this one and the way it transforms our home into a warm & Christmasey happy place.

I'm not sure if I'll be back before the holidays are over—I've been blessed with 15 hour work days this month—so if you don't hear from me, I hope everyone has a wonderful rest of December! And you can always follow me on instagram @jennasuedesign, cause I'm always on there :)

Happy Holidays!

This post is linked up to DIY Showoff!