Free Christmas Trees - Make Your Own

Many people don't have a Christmas tree at this time of year due to financial hardship.

Trees don't have to be the traditional pine tree. Be creative and inventive. Almost anything can become a tree of sorts and the more unusual the better. It will bring back floods of memories for years to come.

Here are some ideas to have a tree without going and buying one:

Cut a branch with or without leaves from your garden and place in a pot of soil. Give it some water every few days if necessary.
Draw a picture of a tree on a large piece of paper and decorate. Hang on the wall.
Decorate an indoor plant, or bring an outdoor plant inside for a few days.
Borrow a tree from a friend with a spare one.
Stack empty cereal boxes etc (even Tupperware or plastic containers will do) from largest at the bottom to smallest at the top. Tape together and cover in green fabric or a tablecloth. Use safety pins to make decorations stick or attach an elastic band to bunches of the cloth( like when tie dying) Hang decorations from them.
Make a tepee shape from tomato plant stakes and push into dirt in a pot. Wrap with string or wool randomly around the stakes and tie off.
Decorate your extra special "OLDEN DAYS TREE" with cardboard cutout gingerbread men, snowmen, trees and stars, a homemade garland from popcorn, Christmas catalogue paper chains, wool or even coloured string. Small treasures belonging to each child can be hung on the tree to make it more special for them. Scrunch up some catalogue paper into balls and hang on the tree.

The point to all this is that is the thought that counts. Even having no money at all does not mean that children (or adults for that matter) have to forgo the tradition and excitement of decorating a "tree".

I wish all of you a merry and wonderful Christmas and hope this helps some of you in having a tree to celebrate the season with.

By Kfromoz from Australia

Add your voice! Click below to comment. ThriftyFun is powered by your wisdom!

Jacquelyn Valentine
Bronze Feedback Medal for All Time! 145 Feedbacks

December 20, 20060 found this helpful

Thanks for the sweet ideas. One year when my children were small we couldn't afford to buy a tree. The whole family went out in the woods and my husband and I cut some small branches off of a pine tree or two and when we got home we tied them together. They were skimpy looking until we got them decorated, then they looked wonderful.

The next year the kids wanted to do it the same way even though we could afford to buy one. Now that they are all grown, they still love the memory of doing that together as a family.

By (Guest Post)

December 20, 20060 found this helpful

I found a wrought-iron garden ornament at a hobby store, near Christmas & off season for garden stuff. It was on sale for a terrific price. It's a wrought-iron filigree pyramid of sorts, about 1 foot wide at the base and tapering up to a pont at the top, about 4.5 feet high altogether. Pretty, I thought. I can make THIS my Christmas tree! So I brought it home, & put it atop my steam radiator near the front window. I decorated it with some faux pine boughs I already had, weaving them in & out of the filigree. I let some of the wrought iron filigree pattern show on purpuse. Next some white lights (I already had them) & mardi gras beads & a few beautiful ornaments of a red & silver color scheme (again I already had them).

If you don't have ornaments a great place to get them is a thrift store. I cannot believe how beautiful & classy it looks! Sitting on the radiator, it looks like a narrow, but full-size real tree from the street. Everyone who sees it thinks I'm Martha Stewart or something! And the beauty of it is that I didn't have to re-arrange any furniture. It doesn't crowd the room at all. You dont' have to have a tree necessarily! Sometimes your own creation is actually prettier and more unique!

Barbara Huggins
Bronze Feedback Medal for All Time! 124 Feedbacks

December 21, 20060 found this helpful

Long ago, when I was the single mother of 2 grade school girls, I decided to paint my dining room for Christmas.
That was where we always put up our tree because we had no dining room table and there was plenty of room.

Well I didn't get the painting done in time so.....I decorated the ladder!! I wrapped lights all around, and hung ornaments and garland.
My girls thought it was the funniest thing they had ever seen. BUT, a few years late, I saw an article in Cosmopolitan magazine that featured a decorated step ladder.
It gave me great pleasure to show the picture to the girls and inform them that I was a 'trend setter'.
My 'girls' are now grandmothers, but every now & then we laugh about our Christmas ladder.

By Lynda (Guest Post)

December 26, 20060 found this helpful

In the late 60's, hippie days, when I first got married, my husband was in the military, so we both went on our honeymoon AND lived in Hawaii for three years. Christmas in Hawaii is terribly disappointing for a Texan because their Christmas trees were about as thin as a negligee, limp as wet feathers, and never taller than four feet back then, it seemed, mostly because they had to be shipped in from the mainland.

Regardless, since it was the most expensive place to live in the U.S., and because we were without extra money, I took the smallest one, stuck it in a pot of dirt, then saved tin cans from each skimpy meal and while my husband was out to sea I used tin-snips and had a blast making all sorts of shiny shapes,
slithers, flashy things, and used most every part of the can. It was truly a miracle I didn't get cut since
all edges were very sharp, except the ones I could curl with the needle-noses pliars we had, but I was determined to have a Christmas tree for us to enjoy. I used pieces of ribbon, colored bottle caps, and anything pretty that we had. Eventually we finished it and it was partially acceptable, then lit a few candles while it was still green, around the base.

It was just a step or two better than some of the decorations in wooden/cardboard huts the street people are stuck with, but it was the beginning of me understanding how to make the best of whatever I have, appreciating/recycling everything, and still remember the true meaning of Christmas is Jesus
Christ. God bless all who remember this fact because He deserves it. : )

Athena
Bronze Feedback Medal for All Time! 215 Feedbacks

December 28, 20060 found this helpful

I love your idea's bout making your own Christmas tree's. I really love the idea bout decorating a ladder.

Zig

Louise B.
Silver Feedback Medal for All Time! 337 Feedbacks

January 6, 20070 found this helpful

A dry leafless branch or several, depending on the amount of room you have, stuck into a can or jar full of stones is very nice. I have a tree in the living room, but put the large branch stuck in a decorative tin in my kitchen with wooden ornaments on it.

Add your voice! Click below to comment. ThriftyFun is powered by your wisdom!