A Book Lover's Christmas Tree

First and foremost, thank you all so much for all the love on our Holiday Home Tour.  I took so very many pictures, many more than could fit in that one post, so I will be sharing a bit more in the coming days.  In our home tour last week, I referred to the flocked tree in our living room as a "tree of my own". Christmas has always been about our kids, as I think it should be.  But, this year, in addition to the tree in the family room with all of our collected ornaments, I decorated the tree in our living room with some of my favorite things.  I try not to follow too many trends in home decor.  Rather, I like think about things to add to our home that reflect who we are.  So, with that in mind, I thought about one of my favorite things, books.

Last year, we had a real tree in this room and I loved it.  But because I need to get my trees up early, it was dry & brittle by Christmas Eve.  So this year I decided to go back to an artificial tree.   I never had a flocked tree before so I also thought it would be fun to try something new.

Our new flocked tree is called the Snowy Everland Tree.  We purchased ours at Amazon, but it is no longer available there.  Right out of the box, I loved the natural look of the tree, without ornaments, and I contemplated leaving it undecorated.  On the negative side, the flocking gets all over everything. It is a real pain.  Plus, I kept moving it around the room trying to figure out where I liked it best.  It was a flocking mess.  But now that everything is situated, it has been good.

I needed some ornaments for this book tree.  And what would be better to use than actual books?  I had a stack of small scale books on display in my family room, so I borrowed them to use.  I simply wrapped them with some ribbon from the Target Dollar Spot.  Therefore, after Christmas, they haven't been damaged at all.  I also found chalkboard ribbon at AC Moore and cut pieces of it into banner shapes and added some meaningful words with a chalk pen.   

I added lots of black and white touches to this room to carry the book theme over.  Other ornaments on the tree include DIY balls decoupaged with book pages, lots of letters, shiny mercury glass, and a camera ornament.  I had a black and white cardboard print made at Walgreen's of my boys walking in the snowy woods.  I ordered it online and was picking it up in less than an hour.  Total cost was about $13.  Not a sponsored post, just thought it was great how quickly I was able to get that made.  I added a piece of twine to hang it from.

I carried the book theme throughout the room.  In a basket behind the table, I collected a book of Robert Frost poems with some fresh clippings, pinecones and antlers.

The flocking makes the tree so bright & cheery during the day.

And it appears to glow at night.

My favorite time of day at this time of year is at dusk when all of the Christmas lights turn on.  Happy Holidays!!