I’ve got a tree styling system. Those of you with Christmas trees have a system, too, right? Because I can’t think of anyone who’s ever said yeah, sure, we’ve got a tree, we just throw it up every year, it’s all good. It’s not like I’ve taken a formal survey, though, so…

And now I can’t help but wonder if anyone out there actually has zero plans when putting up a Christmas tree. Is that even possible? To not even have the smallest vision of how you want your tree to turn out?

My control freak brain cannot compute.

So in typical overshare fashion let us discuss the tree habit here at home. It’s a system that took decades to finesse but it’s a solid one.

We have an artificial tree but it’s one of those amazingly lifelike ones. All the pretty with none of the crawling-underneath-to-water-the-tree challenges. Love it all day long.

After spreading the branches so it looks nice and full comes the lights. Lots of lights. And yes, I fall in the small white lights category but no, I will not object to your large colorful bulbs. To each their own.

Back to the tree. We want so many lights that it looks like the tree twinkles from within. So basically add lights then more lights then another layer just to be sure and you’re good to go.

Next I add the pop. I like a pop of red on my tree so I got one of those boxes of red ball ornaments you can pick up at Target for like $8 plus I add in gold jingly bells around them. I space those out around the tree so now you’ve got beautiful green base, wonderful white twinkles, and pops of red and gold. Side note: this is the most magazine-like beautiful version of our tree. I usually take a photo before the cats destroy it.

Last I’ll tuck in our family ornaments around the red. I have ones from my childhood, a few from my teaching years, annual silver ones from BrightSide’s company, and ones from a couple decades of married life pre- and with kiddos. It makes it a little messier but each section tells a story of our life and it makes me smile. Oh, plus the angel on top. I still remember the day BrightSide and I found that angel.

So there you are, way more information than you ever needed to know about the tree in our family room.