Decorate a Christmas Tree - Nutcracker Theme

Cheri Hennessey: Hi I am Cheri Hennessey. I am here at the Christmas Attic and we are showing you how to decorate a true special Christmas Tree. We are going to show you now how to put the decorations on the tree. We finish with the lights and we are going to start with the garland. Three to four sets of garland should be plenty for this tree. This is a -- this garland is a little bit shorter, they tend to run six to eight feet and we are going to place it around the base of the tree. We are going to reach round as far as you can reach and place it on the branch. Let it hang towards the front, we are going to do the same thing on the other side, kind of use the tree to clamp it on there. Now you want to come back around the front. It's very important for the garland to hang freely. The best way to put garland on a Christmas tree is to use hook. We use an ornament hook you go to the center and you hook it up underneath the branch. Okay, and then you go to half again to the center, put the ornament hook on, and we kind of adjust your artificial tree to get a good spot and you hook it again. I am going to make sure that your garland is not really hung up, so that it's free hanging. And we are going to go the other side and do the same thing. Now we have finished up all with the garland and I am going to show you how to hang some ornaments on the tree. You always want to start with the largest ornaments and go to the smallest ornaments. It's sure to make your tree look more attractive. The larger ornaments today I choose sparkle balls and the big ornaments I always want to go toward the inside of the tree. It will give your tree a depth. I want to hang -- the smaller ornaments will be hanging on the edges. You also want to take your ornaments if you have different colors and you want to have the colors evenly distributed on the tree. And as you can see we have completed getting the large ornaments on. It's important to stand back from you tree as you are placing the large ornaments on. Again we took the three different colors and tried to intersperse them evenly throughout the tree. They are tucked into the tree because they are large. Those fill any space that you have especially if you have a non artificial real tree you will have holes that you need to fill in with the large ornaments. The next step we are going to do is we are going to add the medium ornaments which is really going to set your theme. The medium ornaments for this tree we have chosen are nutcracker sweet figurines and nutcrackers. And these again we want to evenly distribute throughout the tree or we want to place them in between where we have put the others. And we start with the brighter colors also first. So I am going to put the pinks and the reds on. These are the nutcracker sweet figures, I dont know how familiar you are with the nutcracker sweets but you have Clara that's holding the nutcracker, you have Drosselmeyer who gave Clara the Nutcracker. He is the toymaker. You have the Nutcracker Prince. The Nutcracker that comes to life and dances with Clara with the Mouse king. We have completed putting the medium size ornaments which set the theme today. We have the Nutcrackers, a little wooden nutcrackers and we have the Nutcracker sweet figurines. Now we are going to use two different types of snowflakes to tie the theme together. We need about a dozen of each of these. And these you want to go on the tips of the branches and now as you can see we have completed putting the decorations on the tree. We have put the nutcracker sweets figurines, the nutcrackers, and we have added the snowflakes on top of everything on the tips. And we have got the tree fully decorated, we are going to move into finishing the tree up next with the ribbon, tree skirt and the tree topper.