Putting Away the Christmas Tree

I loved my Christmas tree this year. The ornaments covered the tree.

This year I purchased 320 ornaments to complete 4 ornament wreaths that you thread onto a clothes hanger. I wanted to make 3 for the front of my house and 1 for Sharon and Jason. The wreath required about 80 bulb ornaments per wreath. As I started stranding them onto the wire, they started to pop off when there was any pressure... That is because I purchased bulbs from the dollar store and the area where you put the hanging wire was made of plastic and it continually broke in half..

I was complete frustrated at putting the wreath together. I gave up and decided to put them on my Christmas tree. I have been following a fun blog called "A Baby Changes Everything" and she is a professional Christmas tree decorator. Her trees are loaded with bulbs to where you cannot see the tree. She also uses lots of ribbon - which I haven't figured out yet. Instead of hanging all the bulbs onto the tree, she wires them on.

That is exactly what we did, we hung some and wired more. It was beautiful along with all of my glass ornaments. The multi-colored lights and a thousand bulbs were the wow factor I wanted. However, it may have been a little much because the lights were very bright. I put my own lights on the tree (no pre-lit tree) and as I was taking the lights off the tree I counted them. I ended up having 1400 lights on the tree. I got a little carried away. Next year, I think I will try clear lights and thousands of ornaments. I ran out of room in my tote that is designed for bulbs. However, these bulbs were not breakable so I just put them all in one tote - I'm sure they will be safe. It took hours to un-wire all of those bulbs. I am NOT going to wire them on again. It was a nightmare taking them off.
I took all the glass ornaments off and set them on the table, because I wrap them individually to keep them from breaking. They are beautiful when the lights shine off the details of the glass. The tree looked awesome.

Here are a couple of pictures of the tree. The light was shining through the window and the pictures are not that clear but beautiful. It definitely had a bling-bling affect. The additional 320 bulbs gave the tree a WOW factor. Each night, I loved looking at the tree and the glow it gave the living room. All month I had the blinds and curtains open to show the tree (which was decorated around every side). It is always a little sad to take down my Christmas decorations, but how my living room grows and has space when it's gone. It's nice to have it up, but nice to have it down too. Until next year.