Finishing the Christmas Tree

I don't do this personally but I like the look of burlap for ribbon. You can get it in many colors to match your decor.

This one has turquoise burlap ribbon:

We string popcorn while we watch x-mas movies we've all seen dozens of times.  It's one of my family's favorite Chistmas traditions.

Vicotrian tinsel

We used I'll call modern tinsel when I was little.  It was fun putting it on the top of the tree using a blow dryer to reach.  Cleaning up the mess was not so fun.

The funnest part of our tree is when the kids open up all their ornaments and reminisce. After that it is all me and I get bored real quick. We always have gold curly ribbon and a giant bow at the top.

Popcorn is another part of my youth. Stringing it up took a while.

I opt for the tinsel. Mostly because of the way it shimmers with the lights. I could sit in a dark room and stare at a Christmas tree for hours. I haven't put one up in years. It's been just me and the dogs for so long but I miss it. It's no longer just me and the dogs so this year there will a tree and combined family traditions. Looking forward to it.

We are now petless, so tinsel was an option. But yeah, pets make it hard to do a few different tree related decorating things.

We got a new ornament for my boys every year as they grew so we like to recall their interest phases as we pull out the ornaments.

We use the tinsel rope on the stair rail, but not on the tree.

Those are some pretty classy looking trees.  Ours looks like a junkyard.

Almost forgot I did this! Took the ribbons off of some of my race medals and used them as ornaments this year. Kind of hard to see since some of them blend in - but it was fun

nice! good to see someone find a use for scrap metal

In spite of having cats in the house, we did tinsel, and yes, we've had to chase the cats around the house to remove dangling, dirty, tinsel...That was when we had previously live trees.  Growing up, we would carefully remove as much tinsel as possible and mom would save it for the next year.  I'm sure a few of the strands got reused 10 times.  We didn't reuse tinsel so much after starting our own traditions.  

This year will be an artificial tree, and I'm not sure I want to try to pick all of the tinsel out of the tree before putting it away.  Maybe time for a new tradition.  

Do you put angels or stars on top of your Christmas trees across the pond?

This year is a star. In the past we've had a bow or an angel.

We've had the same star for the last 25+ years. I don't like it. It's sentimental for DH so we still use it.