A Guide to Decorating Your Christmas Tree with a Horse Theme

Christmas is an exciting time of year that seems to bring out the best in many people. And one of my absolute favorite things about Christmas is all the colorful decorations. There are many colors and textures and style choices to make when you are decorating your home for Christmas. It can be a lot of fun for someone like me who enjoys decorating with different colors and even with particular themes. One thing that I really love is the Christmas tree. To me, the Christmas tree is like the crowning glory of all your Christmas decorating. And when you decorate your Christmas tree with a particular theme or a specific color scheme, the results can be quite fabulous.

Choosing a theme for your Christmas tree doesn't have to be difficult. What are your favorite colors? What are your favorite hobbies? Do you have a favorite animal? These are just a few questions to get you started when you have decided to decorate your Christmas tree with a specific theme. When it was time for me to choose a theme for my Christmas tree, I didn't have to look any further than my favorite animal which is horses. I love horses and I have since I was a little girl so I want my entire house to be decorated with a horse theme so that means that I definitely want a Christmas tree with a horse theme too. I am going to show you how you can decorate your Christmas tree with a horse theme as well.

Obviously the first thing you will need before you can decorate your Christmas tree with a horse theme is the Christmas tree itself. There's a wide variety of the different types of trees, both real trees and artificial trees and it is a personal preference I know. For myself, while I love the smell of a real tree, I don't like the mess from dried needles all over the place and the fire hazard that the tree becomes once it's completely dead. So I opt for an artificial tree most years. One website with a huge selection of artificial trees from four and a half feet to twenty one feet tall in eighty nine different styles is TreeClassics.com.

Now you have your tree so you will need a base or stand for it. Fortunately artificial trees come with their own stand but real trees will need a stand of their own. Christmas tree lots no longer add the nailed cross-boards to the bottom of your Christmas tree as standard practice. Plus they often make you pay extra for nailing those boards to the bottom of your tree. You don't need those boards but you will need a metal stand that will hold water so your Christmas tree won't completely dry out and look terrible before Christmas even gets here. You can pick Christmas tree stands up at any local store such as Walmart, Home Depot, Target, etc.

Before you even get to the decorating part of your horse theme Christmas tree, you'll need to pick a color scheme. It might not seem important but every decoration, light, garland, everything about your entire Christmas tree and even your entire Christmas decorating of your entire house will depend on the color scheme you choose. If you are like me and you love the reds, greens, golds and silvers of traditional Christmas decorating, then you will have plenty of decorating choices to choose from. You can find Christmas decorations in other colors as well or even custom order them so you are not "stuck" with traditional Christmas colors. Stores such as Wal-Mart and Target even have small selections of non-traditional Christmas decorations in colors such as purple and mauve (or they have in Christmases past) for you to choose from. Try to pick a color scheme that you love and then use two or three colors together that coordinate and stick to those colors for a cohesive look to your entire Christmas decorating design.

When you're decorating your Christmas tree with a horse theme, the first thing to put on your tree is the lights. Christmas lights are another one of those things that are entirely up to your personal preferences. You can use the multi-colored lights or all white lights and whether they blink or not is up to you. You can also do a combination of both multi-colored lights and white lights. I recommend at least two to three strands of one hundred lights each for a six foot Christmas tree. To add an extra flair to your horse theme Christmas tree, you can buy special strands of lights that are in different horse themed shapes. There are twelve foot strands with ten horse-shaped lights available at Whale Direct for $27.95. You can add a couple of strands of the horse lights along with a couple of regular strands of lights for a well-lit look for your Christmas tree.

After you add lights to your horse theme Christmas tree, it's time to add the garland. Your garland choices are wide and varied; you can go with the standard foil-type garlands, beaded garlands, or corded garlands. For an interesting look, you can use a mix of different types of garlands together. For a horse theme Christmas tree, you can even consider other non-traditional Christmas tree items to decorate with. Lengths of rope looped around your Christmas tree will make a different and unique garland in either the usual rope color (for the Western horse theme look) or in different colors for a more whimsical look. You can buy any length of rope you want off the spool at home improvement stores such as Lowe's or Home Depot or by pre-packaged lengths. Another non-traditional garland idea is lengths of leather strips. You can purchase this from craft supply stores. One fun item I found online at ChristmasPeople.com is a plastic barbed wire garland in six foot lengths for $5.95. ChristmasPeople.com also sell other Western theme garlands that would compliment your horse theme Christmas tree. A different type of metal horse garland that is made out of rusted metal and wire is available at Willow Tree Home.com. It is made of metal horse cutouts that are about four and a half inches tall with each one connected by curly wire. The entire garland is about ten feet long and cost about $8.00.

Once you've decorated your tree with lights and garland (using your specific color scheme), then you are ready for the real "horse" part of your horse theme Christmas tree. The ornaments are the real horse star of the horse theme Christmas tree. You can buy some very beautiful horse ornaments online. The selection is amazing and colorful and you can get them personalized with your name or your horses' name (if you are lucky enough to own one). You can choose ornaments that focus on only one breed of horse, for example either Arabian or Appaloosa and only buy ornaments of that particular breed for a one horse breed theme Christmas tree. You can choose to focus on either the Western or English style of riding for your horse theme Christmas tree. There are other options too such as a Breyer brand horse theme Christmas tree or a Western theme Christmas tree with Western items such as a Western saddle, cactus, cowboy boots and Texas stars. I think the only problem you might have if you decide to narrow your horse theme so much would be finding enough ornaments that are of one particular breed or one particular 'theme within a horse theme' to fill a big tree. Several websites where you can find selections of Christmas horse ornaments are listed in the resources at the end of this article.

If you have a limited budget or you just love putting things together for an original "done by you" touch, you can make your own horse Christmas ornaments. All you will need are horse figurines and either fishing line, ribbon or cord (from your color scheme). Hopefully as a horse lover you have a collection of horse figurines in various sizes. The best size to make horse decorations from figurines for your Christmas tree depends on the size of your Christmas tree. A five to six foot Christmas tree will need quite a few horse ornaments that are around three, four and up to five inches tall. To turn your horse figurine into a Christmas ornament without disfiguring it would be to tie ribbon or cord around the horse figure and make a bow. Then either add another piece of ribbon or cord or use fishing line instead to leave a long strand to attach to the Christmas tree. A permanent attachment so you can use your horse ornament over and over again would be to take a small drill with a very thin and small drill bit, drill a tiny hole in a spot on the horse figurine (top of the head or back), then screw a small eye hook into the tiny hole and use a Christmas tree hook to attach it to the tree. The horse figurines that would be easiest to work with (for the permanent attachment) would be the hard plastic type used for children's toys. You could also use My Little Pony toys to make a My Little Pony themed Christmas tree. This would be perfectly beautiful for a little girls' room.

Another idea for making horse decorations for your Christmas tree is to use pictures of horses from magazines, books, cards or even your pictures of your own horse and gluing the pictures to pieces of wood, foam-core poster board, playing cards, small pieces of plastic or any interesting item with a flat side that you can glue a picture to. Then you can glue cord or ribbon around the edges for a finished look. You can take tiny picture frames and put pictures in them and hang those on the tree too. The imaginative possibilities are endless for decorating your Christmas tree with a horse theme.

And to put at the top of your horse theme Christmas tree, I recommend a horse of course! You can use a larger horse figurine, perhaps one of the beautiful ones made by the Breyer company and add ribbons and cord, perhaps back it with a large star in your color scheme with large ribbons hanging down onto the tree. You can even turn your horse into an angel or Pegasus by adding wings. You can always buy one too but a horse tree topper is a little more difficult to find. You can check ebay.com and possibly find a horse tree topper there.

If you have too many horse ornaments and not enough Christmas tree, I recommend putting up more Christmas trees. I say this in a somewhat joking way but I like having a small tree in my room and in the kids rooms as well so we can all have some Christmas cheer right there with us at all times. It's a visible manifestation of all the beauty and joy and love that Christmas brings out in many people during that one special time of year.

Once your horse theme Christmas tree is decorated, you may want to think about horse theme decorations to put around the house and outside in your yard. Over at the Lawn Ornaments and Fountains.com website, they have either a carousel horse or rocking horse topiary statuary with 300 clear lights for your yard listed at $400.00. If your budget is huge and you love both horses and Christmas, then you might want to consider the Five Horse Carousel Outdoor Display. It is eleven and one half feet tall and eighteen feet in diameter and is available at World Class Christmas Displays. There are five carousel horses in a circle around a red and white garland pole, each horse is on its own red and white garland pole and all are under a red garland canopy. It is listed at the website for $3475.00.

Decorating your Christmas tree with a horse theme is a lot of fun, especially for the horse lover, and what better time of year to show everyone how much you love horses. And who knows, maybe they'll even get an idea or two (hint, hint) from your horse theme Christmas tree and get you a horse theme Christmas present this year!

Resources:
BackintheSaddle.com. Christmas Horse Items.
Bronners Christmas Wonderland. Horse Ornament.
ChristmasPeople.com. Western Cowboy Christmas.
Home and Stable Horse Gifts & Decor. Horse Christmas Ornaments.
Horse Tack Co. Breyer Horse Christmas Ornaments.
Online Discount Mart. Southwestern Christmas Decorations.
Oriental Trading. Western Theme Supplies.
Snowflake Designs. Horse Christmas Ornaments.
Tack Room Inc. Christmas Horse Ornaments.
Trailwood Western Home Decor Store.
Whalesdirect.com. Horse Gifts and Merchandise.