Christmas Spirit All Year - The Easter, Christmas, Halloween, and More... Tree

Valentines day Tree:

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Put heart shaped ornaments, pictures of your significant other all over the tree (in your most cherished moments), you can adorn the bottom of the tree with chocolates, loose candy hearts, or anything you want (even valentines day cards!).

I took a pad of post it notes and wrote short poems, things I'm thankful for (like "I love that you___" or "Remember when____" or "Thank you for_____".

I wrote up a bunch and folded them in half, then rolled them up. I found red, pink, blue, and green colored post it's (you can use any paper but post its are self sealing :). I used pastel colored ribbons to make each note look like an old school scroll. The ribbons also hang it on the tree. I also went way back and created letters and folded them into cool shapes like a heart, the school days fold and tuck notes, and things like that and hung them.

I found some cheap valentines day earrings that were hearts and hung them as ornaments. I also strung (this was daunting) a bunch of those heart message candies onto some thread and hung that. The problem with those was they tend to cake apart when you stab them, you have to get the needle wet and be very patient. You can also just get a huge bag of heart candies and string them up.

On the bottom I put chocolates (loosely thrown in there all wrapped), some Valentine cards (glossy and cool), and pictures of my favorite times together.

After the first year we blended the tree so she'd put things on it, I'd put things on it and for the whole valentines day week we'd do this and enjoy it like a Christmas Tree for our relationship! Gifts also start to stack :)

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St. Patrick's Day Tree:

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St. Patrick's day (adorn it with green lights, clovers (construction paper or find them around with the little leprechaun!) Then put grass on the bottom (or green turf then put four leaf clovers in the turf)!

You can add festivities like candy clovers/characters, even those beads you see around Martigras!

Get some green Christmas lights or if you can find them (often you can) get some of those unique (but small) St. Patrick's Day lights with characters on them.

Since the tree itself is green I add some tinsel to offset the lights from the tree itself. The beads are also reflective (dollar store) and look great.

Every year there are new St. Paddy's day trinkets that come out and the dollar stores carry a ton of great things you can add to this tree.

You can stack some of those cute Heineken "kegs" below it for effect or use the tree as a center-peice for the festivities after dinner!

Birthday Tree:

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I like the birthday tree because it gives someone an all day symbol that shows it's their birthday. The birthday tree is very personal and a great way to show someone in your family you care. This tree would be adorned specific to the person it's being made for.

You would essentially find out what they cherish, for example if they are a computer geek, you can find some cool iconic things to hang. I found some great stationary magnets at Wal*Mart that had pictures of Facebook, Twitter, Email, and the like depicted on a round piece. Take k some paper clips and used the magnet itself to hold them so you can hang them up.

You can take a great picture of the birthday person and have it laminated into a Star to put at the top of the tree.

You can put their favorite colors up in tinsel or shredded tissue paper, and can add anything to the tree that would show the person you know them, know what they are interested in, and that you appreciate them. I find adding notes rolled up in post-it's works for any personal holiday or occasion.

You can also make a bunch and lace them throughout the tree and tell the birthday person if they have a hard time coming up with a good wish, you've supplied them with some ideas. They can go through them and pick one. The cool thing here is you can show them you know what they'd wish for- likely you'll get one or two right just from what you hear them talk about.

How would you feel if you came home and there was a tree in your honor waiting to celebrate your birthday? I'd feel amazing and likely post it on FB to share :)

make sure you add some small pictures to hang on there of the last years best times! I would take my digital images over the year and have them printed out to thumb sized then laminate them and have them set up for hanging. How cool would your birthday be if you could see all the great times you've had with the people you love? It really speaks to the future, not "getting old" but rather, that you had another successful year right?

Thanksgiving Tree:

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The Thanksgiving tree is not all that different from the Halloween tree other than removing the ghosts and goblins of all types. You can pretty closely recycle the Halloween tree but add instead of ghosts and Halloween specific candy, you add some tiny pumpkins (if you can find them), turkey ornaments, and what I like to do is find (at the goodwill or if your kids have food toys) some food items in those play kits. You can get small breads, green beans, tiny plates, etc...

Since Thanksgiving is often most associated with the food, it would be fantastic to add food ornaments to your tree including the small plates! You could use the tree as a center piece on a large or long table where you stack it elevated and below it would be the surrounding food we all know and love on this great holiday!

You can find orange lights and even pumpkin light sets work nicely.

Halloween Tree:

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The Halloween tree is easy. You just need a bunch of those traditional mini chocolate bars, candies, and some ghosts and goblins to hang. I used a smoke machine to really bring a nice effect to it. Another great idea is dry ice in a glass of water (smokes) behind the tree. Lights can be found easily in orange.

Put loads of candy below it set it on a table near the door for trick or treat day so they can just walk in and take candy from the tree!

Pumpkins look great under this tree. If you elevate it up like the Thanksgiving tree you can put bigger pumpkins below it.

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New Years Day Tree:

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You can spice this one up like fourth of July or you can get more creative using confetti stars underneath, the year as the star (you can often find year plastic pieces you can use). You can hang cut out dates that were important for you this year and also do the scrolls thing (your new years resolutions written in tiny paper and hung on the tree).

We generally hang a tiara with the year on it at the top (crown our tree). On the bottom we use a special round container (usually a very large salad bowl with a top) to hold sand.

We get the sand at the beach directly throughout the year as we travel and save it. We end up with white sand (from Florida), Lincoln City sand, and so forth, even sand from inside a cave right here in Oregon.

The sand is a family tradition where we all write down our 10 best resolutions then fold the paper and bury it in the sand. When the new year is over (we give it 5 days) we remove the sand "pit" below the tree, shake the tree off a bit, and cover the bowl with a lid. We put this bowl on the top of the refrigerator or cabinets and let it simmer all year. At the end of the year we like to read our resolutions and see where we made it and where we didn't. We also write down the things we did accomplish that weren't on the list for fun.

Mother's Day/Father's Day Tree:

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The Mothers/Fathers day tree is very closely related to the Birthday tree because it's going to be related to a family member and generally there is only one mom and one dad. If you have multiple families (i.e. due to divorce/remarry) you can just create a tree for each parent or make one to cover the entire day and mother's fathers etc...

You can make a tree to tribute your parents on their day. Fathers day can have cute little tie ornaments, cards beneath the tree, and ornaments can be scrolls (for interactivity) of your thank you's for all your mom/dad have done for you that year, what is special and so on..

Fathers

I like to put a small but really cool tie straight down the middle (as if the tree were wearing a tie). I'd then put cuff-links as ornaments, and anything else that speaks to my dad.

Mothers

Mother's day for me is all about flowers. What I do for the mother's day tree is go out and find a bunch of amazing looking flowers. I can usually go to the store and find a multi-pack of flowers of all kinds together and just lace them throughout the tree. The lights really wake up the flowers. I try to find a pink set of lights for this one, for the father's day one I use blue lights.

Veteran's Day Tree:

Show tribute for the veterans in your family, put their picture(s) on the tree, and hang metals on the tree, or ornaments of metals, pictures of things that have happened (good things), and decorate around it to match.

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