The joys of decorating our first Christmas tree

After a long hiatus, I am back on the blog and ready to say goodbye to 2018. It just felt like yesterday when I and a million other Londoners were crammed up by River Thames to watch the NYE fireworks. As they say, time flies when you’re having fun. Admittedly my blogging plan and schedule were #epicfail! Apologies guys… all I can say is… life happens! So much has happened since my last blog post. Where do I start?! When did we decide to sell our house and move back to central London? Or when we moved out of our house to our new neighbourhood and loving it? Then work got super busy, coupled with a few globetrotting adventures and much-needed holidays later, I found myself going on for 6+ months without showing any love to my blog! Let’s hope for a better blogging year in 2019!! Hopefully, you haven’t given up on me just yet… #fingerscrossed

Anyway, this post is about decorating our first Christmas tree. I’ve never really been a Christmassy person back in Australia, where I grew up. But since moving to Europe, Christmas has become one of those things I get super excited about! Perhaps owing to the festive vibes everywhere we turned in London. Beautifully decorated Christmas trees and buzzing Christmas markets bring Christmas spirit to just about any European city, finally able to wear a Christmas jumper or just simply something to keep my mind from the gloomy cold winter days with only 9 hours of daylight?

Therefore, this Christmas, for the first time in our married life, Alan and I finally got ourselves a Christmas Tree!! and I don’t just mean any Christmas tree but a REAL Christmas tree! In our household, it’s a go-strong-or-go-home attitude. 🙂 I know, I know… Christmas is over! But I still want to share and document this because it is our first Christmas Tree.

We went for a 5-6 foot Nordic Fir tree from Patch (thanks to Instagram – what can’t you find there these days?) because the needles don’t drop. I don’t know how much people spend on a real Christmas tree, but ours cost just under £70. After discussing with some of my colleagues, apparently, this was quite expensive!! Oops! Anyway, it smelled divine – like fresh pines (obviously) with a tinged of pineapple. Mmm-hmmm…

Real Christmas Tree, nordic fir — *Fresh Nordic fir standing nicely by the window. It smells divine! I learned quickly that next to the radiator was not the best spot for them!*

Do you have a theme for your tree? I’ve been collecting baubles and Christmas tree ornaments as souvenirs in our travels over the years, but it was hardly enough to fill up a 6-foot tree. So I purchased a classic decoration set from Pines and Needles. I went for the white and silver set as I wanted that to be the colour of our tree and accent with all my special pieces from around the world. The white and silver baubles, teardrops, flowers and bow were from the set. The rest are from my years of collection. I am so happy that I can finally see them hanging on our first Christmas tree. I guess you can say that the theme of our tree is a time-after-time travel Christmas tree. 😉

*Moved it to the middle of the room away from the radiator.*

Christmas baubles hand painted glass ornaments — *Carefully placing a hand-painted glass bauble the mister picked out from our recent trip to Bremen, Germany*

luxury christmas bauble collections — Red ceramic Wedgewood bauble I got from Harrods, and the blue bauble was the hand-painted one from Bremen and the china Pandora box ornament was a much-loved gift from my dear sister a couple of years ago.

Dutch china doll — *This pretty Dutch lady was from Amsterdam last year.*

The red doll here is not really a Christmas ornament but it was pretty, so I decided to hang it on my tree. This was from my recent trip to Sichuan. She is a historical figure who was deemed one of the 4 most beautiful women in China.

Christmas tree real tree — *The crystal chandelier ornament was my souvenir from Strasbourg last year.*

I am not religious at all but I love all the Christmas buzz, especially since Christmas is huge here in the UK and across Europe! So I needed to get in with the actions! To be fair, I’ve always wanted to have a real Christmas tree as you can tell by all the baubles and ornaments I’ve been collecting. I think I’m going to keep this up as our family tradition. What’s your Christmas tradition in your family? Do you have a real tree or a faux tree?

Hope you’ve had a wonderful Christmas with your loved ones!

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