Now we come to the centrepiece on any Christmas living room, the tree itself. And as a bonus part to this, the next part deals with Pet Safety. How to help keep our pets safe at this time of year.

Little known fact: the history of the tradition of Christmas trees date back to the 16th century. Here is a bit more about how this tradition started. This is according to history website, https://www.history.com.

Germany is credited with starting the Christmas tree tradition as we now know it in the 16th century when devout Christians brought decorated trees into their homes. ... It is a widely held belief that Martin Luther, the 16th-century Protestant reformer, first added lighted candles to a tree.

Commonly, trees that are used for Christmas are commonly evergreen trees such as spruce or Nordic For trees, but today, modern Christmas trees are either real or artificial.

Nowadays, a company called Balsam Hill, makes very realistic looking artificial Christmas trees that look like the real tree, that their patented design of realistic looking foliage boasts. Look to this picture which comes courtesy of Balsam Hill.

See how realistic looking this tree looks? This is because of the realistic touch technology the company uses to make their beautiful yet artificial Christmas trees look so realistic in their own way.

Now to begin with the decoration tips for the tree.

1) Decide first weither to use a real Christmas tree or an artificial Christmas tree. Once you make this decision, then decide on the brand if using an artificial Christmas tree, or if using a real evergreen, decide on the type to use. (For this example, I'll use the Balsam Hill Artificial Christmas tree.) Look to the picture above.

2) next, unbox the tree, and separate the branches and space them out. Or if it is a Balsam Hill Artificial Christmas Tree, just flip the tree the right way for the bottom, to reveal the branches. The take the top branches, and slide this into the pole to connect to the rest of the tree. To explain this better, look at the following video below.

3) next, comes the decoration of the tree. There is an order to do. Oh, this order of putting the tree up, is courtesy of https://www.amara.com. Part 1 of the setting up the tree is done. Next add and evenly distribute the fairy lights around the tree. This really helps to let Santa Claus find your house on Christmas Eve. Or in some cases, artificial Christmas trees come pre-lit. Which means lights or fibre optics are built in to save you time and money, to help prevent cable tangles. If your tree hasn't got a pre-lit option, look at the video below, to see how to evenly distribute the fairy lights on your tree.

4) next, decide the colours of your core baubles of the tree, if you decide your theme, traditional reds and gold or modern bold colours mixed with silver. In this case, I'm working with traditional colours of the Christmas season. Reds and gold always work for a real traditional feel. Place accents of the core colour baubles you chose all over the tree, on every 2nd branch as you wish. This picture below is courtesy of online shopping catalog website,  https://www.very.co.uk.

When you are done with the core colour baubles, you are ready to move to the next step.

5) when you are ready to do the next step, the next thing to do is to layer some colour around the rest of the tree branches try to aim for colours that match with your core baubles, if using red and gold core baubles, try coordinating with shades of pinks and purples because these colours are on the colour wheel as members of the red colour family, and to complement the gold, use it's opposite, silver glitter baubles. In this set as an example, you can add glitter reindeer hangables on the tree to complement the red and gold core baubles.

6) After this, comes the chance to put you one of a kind special touches to the tree and spread them out around the tree. These special one of a kind ornaments can be home made craft ideas like tree ornaments made from cinnamon, buttons and artificial tree foliage, this idea comes courtesy of an amazing ideas website called https://www.pinterest.com.

7) next, you add the final touches and the tree topper. The final touches could be a metallic bead garland rather than old school tinsel. Use the metallic bead garlands in one of your core colour. For example, gold metallic bead garlands work so well here.

Also remember the tree topper, if you are a devout Christian, use the Bethlehem Star topper, be sure that it lights up too.

You could also place a sheet of glittery white cotton candy style fabric to resemble snow.

This is great to resemble snow before you place the gifts under the tree.

8) now you have a tree skirt on your tree stand, place the gifts under the tree. Here's and example.

Here's a fully decorated tree to see what the concept looks like when completed.

So pretty right?

Now in the next part of this chapter, we cover Christmas tree pet safety. And all the useful hacks to protect your pets and the tree during the festive season.