1.  A Beautiful Christmas Tree  🔲

We’ve put this one first on our list because it’s the most important, most beautiful, and most essential part of decorating your home for Christmas. There’s a lot to consider when deciding what kind of tree will grace your home this year. If you don’t mind some (or sometimes a lot) of post-Christmas cleanup, then an all-natural, big beautiful evergreen spruce or fir will always be your best bet. They’re beautiful and they’ll give your home that natural, Christmas-y smell. But after they’ve been in your home for about a month, they’ll undoubtedly start to shed some of their needles, so be prepared to do some thorough post-Christmas vacuuming if you decide to go this route. 

Sometimes though, going with an artificial tree can be just as nice. The great thing about an artificial tree is the availability of different styles, sizes, and colors. Want a little Christmas snow on your tree? No problem, many artificial Christmas trees are glazed with a thin layer of white snow. Love Christmas trees but hate the time it takes to decorate them? No problem, there are a myriad of artificial Christmas tree models that not only come fully lit, but also fully ornamented, which will make “decorating” (cough cough) your tree this year easier than icing a German cake. 

Keep in mind, the most important part of choosing/decorating a Christmas tree is choosing the lighting style that best appeals to your individual taste, which we’ll discuss more in depth in #10.

At True Value, we offer a huge selection of Christmas trees to choose from, with a vast array of shapes, sizes, decorated, and non-decorated, which you can peruse here (just make sure you come in and show us the one you like today so we can get it ordered for you before Christmas!): https://www.truevalue.com/shop/holiday-seasonal/christmas-trees-accessories/christmas-trees

2.  Your Stockings  🔲

There’s nothing more cozy and inviting for your children on Christmas morning than to run down the stairs, and see a stocking with his or her name on it, hanging from your mantle above a blazing fire. And selfishly, it’ll add that extra little bit of Christmas decorative style to your home. If you like a more traditional look hanging from your mantle, there are plenty of red and green stockings available. However, if you prefer a more personable, customized stocking for each one of your children, or your spouse, there are plenty of purchasable Christmas stockings that feature cartoon and video game characters, cars, musicians and famous works of art, hobbies, and even gags. But make sure you actually stuff them with small presents or goodies - there’s nothing more tacky and upsetting than finding a stocking with your name on it, opening up the top, and finding it to be completely empty!

Let us help you get the perfect Christmas stockings for your family ordered today! You can browse our selection here: https://www.truevalue.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=stockings

3.  A Train Set  🔲

Of all the most-overlooked Christmas decorations every year, the one that actually tends to be the most necessary is none other than the Christmas train! And it’s tragic, because just a small amount of time and money can add so much cheer to your home on Christmas. Kids love to play with them, and adults love to see them, especially circling around your tree on Christmas morning. If this sounds a difficult and lengthy task, don’t worry! The most time-consuming part of setting up a train set is just connecting the tracks together. After that, it truly is all fun and games from there!

4.  Religious Nativity Scenes  🔲

There’s nothing that screams “the reason for the season” like a nativity scene. After all, there really is only one reason we celebrate Christmas in the first place. For all our Christian friends, the nativity scene is an absolute must-do to make your Christmas decorations feel complete. There are so many different types available to choose from when it comes to a nativity scene, but in our opinion, you can never go wrong with the classic stable diorama, with Mary, Joseph, the baby Jesus, and the three kings bearing gold, frankincense, and myrrh. But for those of you with a little bit more money to spend, and are truly proud of your religious heritage, there are much larger, outdoor nativity scenes to choose from to (which we touch on briefly in #9). These include blown-up versions of the basic diorama nativity, but also have more unique ones you can lose in conjunction with lights, like the nativity silhouette, which will cast a beautiful nativity shadow on the side of your house at night time, for the neighbors to admire when they drive by your house at night time.

Please let us help you order our huge lawn nativity today, which is an air-blown, 79 inch tall model for your lawn that will leave your neighbors in awe. Check it out here: https://www.truevalue.com/airblown-inflatable-christmas-decoration-nativity-56-in

5.  Necessary Nutcrackers  🔲

No Christmas decorating job is complete before you set up the necessary nutcracker (or nutcrackers!). We recommend going all-out and setting up a bunch around your living room, dining room, and if you really want to get fancy, buy two life-size nutcrackers to guard your home on Christmas Day, one standing on each side of your door! At the very least, make sure you have one mighty nutcracker overlooking your living room as your mantle centerpiece!

6.  Christmas Candles  🔲

Have you ever finished your Christmas decorating, looked around your beautifully decorated home, and thought to yourself, “it feels like something’s missing”? If so, it could be because you’ve forgotten a frequently-overlooked Christmas decorating essential: a set of cozy, Christmas candles. It’s shocking how many families forget to set up their Christmas candles every year, because they truly put the cherry on top of every great Christmas decorating job. It’s best to go with a combination of green, red, and white, and just let the flame draw the eyes of your Christmas guests to your candles. But, if you can’t find all the Christmas colors (that’s why you should always buy your Christmas decorations early!), then no problem - at least make sure you find the necessary reds, which are the most energetic and cozy of the colors, and is the most essential color candle to complete your decorating!

7.  Wintery Wreaths  🔲

Despite being one of the most obvious ones, this is another essential decoration that tends to be skimped out on around Christmas time. That said, wreath decorating can be a little more complicated than you might think, because there are tons of different styles, sizes, and places around your home that a beautiful Christmas wreath can be placed. If you’re only going to do one, then we recommend going the most classic route - the standard round wreath hanging in the middle of your front door. 

If you’re one of the many Christmas fanatics in the United States, then we recommend covering more ground, with more than one style. One of the best places to put a second wreath is along your mantle right above your fireplace. There are many options when it comes to a garland wreaths, but if you really want to get fancy, you can get one with some artificial snow on it, red flowers, or even one with a colorful set of Christmas lights on it. 

If you’ve already done both of these, and you have a little extra time (and cash) to invest in Christmas decorations, then you can invest in a second wreath garland for around your front doorway. Nothing will make your guests smile as they approach your door on Christmas Day than seeing a beautiful garland and wreath gracing your front door. Just keep in mind, it’s best practice to make sure that whichever wreath garland you choose to line your front doorway matches the round wreath hanging from the door! If you want, you can invest in a matching wreath garland and round wreath set for your front doorway, and kill two birds with one stone!

8.  A Welcoming Archway  🔲

There’s nothing more fun for your the children of your guests than to walk through a beautifully-decorated Christmas archway on Christmas Day. There are a ton of options online for archways, some are all-in-one, some come in sets, and some can be pieced together with a variety of different decorations.

One of the most popular (and easiest) is the air-blown archway, which are ubiquitous online and come in a variety of styles, decorations, sizes, and themes. Some of the most popular are ones that look like candy canes, ones with nutcrackers on both sides, and even ones that look like gingerbread houses!

If you a prefer a more customized, hands-on approach, then there are tons of different styles and themes you can create yourself by piecing decorations together, and utilizing just a little bit of old-fashioned creativity! Some Christmas lights, wreaths, and figures pieced together can easily created a beautiful archway, and if you already have existing bushes, shrubs, or small trees surrounding the front of your home or walkway, these can easily be incorporated into your archway with some simple Christmas lights!

If you need some inspiration or ideas on this one, a simple Google search will turn up hundreds of thousands of results from home-owners just like yourself who’ve used air-blown ones to simplify the job, or their own creativity and ingenuity to piece together their own. If you need a little help, it never hurts to draw some influence from other home-owners!

9.  Extravagant Lawn Ornaments  🔲

The reason why lawn ornaments are sometimes overlooked during Christmas decorating are primarily because either a.) many homeowners don’t have the lawn space for them or b.) of all the Christmas decorations, lawn ornaments are the most expensive. If either of these apply to you, then feel free to skip this one, because #9 here will only apply to those who have lawn space, have money and time to invest, and are always the most in the Christmas spirit. 

That said, a lawn ornament, if properly placed and chosen, can be the most enjoyable part of your Christmas decorating this year (besides #10!). We’ve already gone over the possibility of using a large nativity scene in your yard in #4, and a life-size nutcracker in #5. But what if you’d like something a bit different? Needless to say, you’ve got hundreds of options, but we’re going to go over some classics, as well as our personal favorites and recommendations, here in #9.

The easiest lawn ornaments to set up for Christmas are the classic air-blown ornaments, which come in an endless number of themes, but Santa Claus, snowmen, and reindeer all make up the most popular air-blown designs. But, if you’d like to be a bit more original, we recommend an air-blown Grinch in his Santa outfit (our personal favorite!), or Peanuts’ Snoopy in his Christmas outfit.

There are also a myriad of solid, non-air-based Christmas lawn ornaments that are equally as fun or more-so. If you like cartoons, Disney makes a large array of figure ornaments of all your favorite characters to greet your Christmas guests from your front yard, including Mickey Mouse! Light-up reindeer are also very fun, and if you don’t mind spending a little bit more money, you might even want to consider Santa in his sleigh!

10. Essential Christmas Lights  🔲

We’ve saved lighting for last, because we could write an entire book on Christmas lights alone, but we’ll outline the essentials here in #10.

Of course, the most important Christmas lights you’ll put up this year will be on your Christmas tree (provided you don’t have an artificial tree that comes pre-lit). But once the tree inside your home is lit, you may want to consider the tree outside your home… There’s nothing more fun than picking the biggest evergreen tree in your front yard, and wrapping lights around it 25 feet in the air! You’ll certainly be turning your neighbors heads as they drive by your home. If you have bushes or shrubs in your yard, these also make great highlights for extra Christmas lights.

You’ll also want to make sure you use Christmas lights to highlight some of your other favorite decorations you’ve put up this year. For example, if you took our advice in #7 and put up a wreath garland over your mantle, along with some candles and a nutcracker, then highlighting your mantle with some white Christmas lights will complete your setup, and won’t distract from the more important decorations on your mantle, and will simply enhance them instead by drawing your guests eyes to your mantle. 

And finally, for those of you who are really in the Christmas spirit this year, you may decide you want to highlight the outside of your house with Christmas lights. You can use multi-color lights for these, but we normally recommend white lights because they’re brighter, and tend to stand out more at nighttime. If you took the extra time to put up a Christmas archway as we discuss in #8, then highlighting your archway with some Christmas lights will make it even more beautiful. Many people like to wrap lights around the edges of their roof - which looks amazing - but make sure you take into account length because you’ll want to do all four sides, not just one, so make sure that’s accounted for. Be safe! You’ll want to enjoy your how beautiful your house looks when it’s completely lit up the night of Christmas Eve, not grieving a family member who tragically fell off a ladder while attaching the lights to your roof!

We have all the lights you’ll need for any Christmas lighting project you could ever dream of here at True Value. Browse our lights here, and let us help you get it ordered before the big day: https://www.truevalue.com/shop/holiday-seasonal/christmas-lighting

And here we are! We’re done decorating your home for Christmas! Now it’s time to build a blazing fire, and enjoy all your hard work with a cup of hot cocoa! Have a merry Christmas, and a happy New Year!