You've bought the (real) spruce, you've cleared the space, and now JOE is here to help you decorate the perfect Christmas tree.
What we really want to help you do though is avoid any tree toppling travesties, as suffered by these poor unfortunate souls:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dUW3Trw1yo
The first step is to make the dreaded trip to the attic where you'll find last year's decorations tucked away, multiple cardboard boxes safely storing your tinsel, baubles and approximately 16, 387, 255 lights.
Those goddamn lights. Let the untangling begin.
Sometime later...
Now that you've got that loathsome LED task out of the way, you can actually get stuck into the fun side of the festive season. With Bing Crosby crooning in the background and a cosy, warm fire glowing in the hearth, you're good to go.
Firstly, make sure the tree is the right way up. If you have it upside down then you're doing it wrong.
Now that you've got that basic step sorted it's back to those lights.
Starting from the top of the tree and making your way down, string the lights out evenly, moving around the tree in a circular motion. Once you've spaced them around the tree, stand back, admire your work and try to fill out any gaps or areas that seem obviously darker than the rest.
Remember, you're an artist and the tree is your canvas so channel your inner Da Vinci - he was a great man for putting up the Christmas tree.
Once you've got the lights successfully in place, it's time to hang the decorations. These are most likely a mixture of shiny baubles, dull baubles, frosted baubles, silver snowflakes, golden snowflakes, plastic icicles etc. The key here is to make sure that similar looking decorations are placed as far apart from each other on the tree, thereby creating the impression that you own way more decorations than you actually do.
Just make sure that they're tasteful please. None of this Miley Cyrus Wrecking Ball malarkey. Horrifying...
Up next is the tinsel. As soon as you've finished parading around the front room wearing it like a feather boa and singing Chris De Burgh's 'Patricia The Stripper', it's time to put it back in its rightful place, on the tree. People will tell you that fluffy tinsel has gone out of fashion, just like wearing Crocs and flares, but JOE's here to tell you, dressed proudly in our Christmas Crocs and flares combo, that those people are wrong.
And to top it all off, it's the star. Or a bow. Or a snowflake. Or a picture of Nicolas Cage's creepy face. Whatever floats your festive boat really.
So there you have it. You've now (hopefully) created the perfect Christmas tree and all that remains is for Santa to deliver lots of lovely presents for you so that you can safely store them under your Winter work of art:
Now that you have the perfect Christmas tree, you're well on your way to having a perfect Christmas with Littlewoods Ireland.
