Our Homemade Eco Friendly Christmas Tree

The past couple of years we have massively changed our thoughts about Christmas, opting for a more simpler approach to gift giving and to Christmas itself. No more evenings spent online shopping, no more endless shopping expeditions and no more useless and unwanted gifts purchased for family members and friends. We have consciously decided only to buy one gift for our boys and a couple of stocking fillers and prefer to exchange homemade gifts with our immediate family. Our main focus for Christmas is not gift giving, but appreciating what we have; spending time together as a family and catching up with our loved ones, even if that is by Skype!

We used to buy a six foot real Christmas tree every year when we lived in the UK. A beautiful nordic pine that we bought late November so that we could get the best out of the tree before we headed up North before the big day, for a family Christmas in Lancashire. We always bought a locally sourced tree but still found we ended up paying around £40 for the pleasure of having a farmed Christmas tree in our 3rd floor flat. Part of our simplified Christmas is to use what we have, be frugal and be kinder to the environment. Last year we had a olive branch Christmas tree, freshly pruned, the year before we dug up and potted a pine tree from the garden. This year we have opted to make our own tree!

Using some wooden posts, up cycled from an old fence, a few bits of wood from the old derelict barn we made a wigwam style frame. We used a few branches of a rather bendy and sturdy evergreen shrub to create a circular rings around the frame. Then we decorated the frame with pine tree branches, pine cones and eucalyptus bark from a neighbour’s recently felled trees.

The finished eco Christmas tree was the perfect place to tie on ribbon, hang the baubles and decorations that we have collected and made together as a couple and now as a family. We think our tree looks just as beautiful, if not even more so than a real tree. What do you think of the results? What is your Christmas tree like?

Linked up with photalife. Do check out what other bloggers have been photographing this week.