Christmas Tree Hacks

Am I using the term "hacks" correctly?  I try not to use new words if I'm not sure, but my post today is a little more than "DIY fun". 

Last year I went to bed early one night.  I fell asleep and my husband screamed ad yelled for me, called me on my cell phone when I didn't answer, and sent me multiple text messages of "help!"...so I came running to imagine the worst.  There he was, on the floor and I panicked.  But, like the pain he can be, the reality was he was watering the Christmas tree and he ran out of water.  :/

Here is how I prevented that from ever happening again.  I created a tree watering tube. 


I went to Lowes or Home Depot for 4 feet of tube.  They cut it from a giant spool of tube for you right there.  I made sure to find a tube that was wide enough to insert a funnel in to one end.  Then, I raided the baking drawer in the kitchen for a small funnel. 

Although the end of the funnel fit pretty well in to the tube, I secured it with a little duct tape just to be sure. 

I placed the funnel near where I wanted to water the tree, and inserted the tube between branches, securing the tube to the trunk every few inches with some simple zip ties.  Then, I made sure the tube sat below the top edge of the tree base.  Now, we just fill a cup of water and pour it right in to the funnel. 

My next "hack" has to do with my obsessive urge to make sure things match.  Last week, we set up the tree with our rustic ornaments.  Since last Christmas, though, I finished painting and decorating our living area and the colors are on the creamy/aqua scheme of things.  So, the rustic looked really out of place.  Since we recently set up a family room in the basement, we figured we could set up our fake tree with the rustic ornaments there. 

Then, I went on a mission to find ornaments that would work better with my color scheme and found this picture on Pinterest.  (Here is the website from the pin.)

I LOVE this look. I had to have this color scheme!  Although, I was disappointed when I went to the store to find that most white bauble ornaments were a matte finish and cheap looking.  I ended up at Michaels and bought clear glass ornaments to coat with white and gold paint.  Here are the results:

A few tips, if you want to try this.  You'll need patience.  I sometimes lack this.  Fill the ornament with the color paint you'd like and shake it around.  Empty the leftover paint back in the bottle and sit the ornament upside down to dry and empty for at least 2 days.  I did not do this second part and one week later, I had some  many sad ornaments that needed another shake and dry. 

I didn't have any plastic cups, so I used a shipping box and a box cutter, cut an X and poked the top of the ornament through to hang upside down. 

 

Here you can see many of my ornaments had extra paint in them.  LOL

 

 

Now that I have my ornaments, I needed a garland.  I used red wooden cranberry garland on the rustic tree, which I love because it was simple.  I've looked all over for a simplistic garland to add to my new color scheme.  Found. Absolutely. Nothing.  Why must everything Christmas-y be covered in glitter?  

 

So I went back to the craft store and bought some cream-colored ribbon to string on a thread.  Here's how my garland turned out:

Happy Holidays!