Have you ever had your Christmas tree fall over? I have, after it was completely decorated… CRASH! Sadly, more than one year it’s happened too. So frustrating!! At one point we resorting to actually wiring the tree to the frame of the bay window to keep it upright. That definitely wasn’t the best solution to prevent the Christmas tree from falling, but at the time it was all I could think of.  

Finally, we came up with a better plan and have used it ever since! (It’s been many years now with this new unique Christmas stand.)

Here it is…

Our unique Christmas tree stand that never topples!

This is done in layers, I lay the tree skirt down first. I have a tree skirt I made that is just a large circle with no slit, so it must go down first. 

Next the decorative tin box goes where the center of the tree will be. (We have super soft pine floors in our newly remodeled house, so we opted to put little rubber floor protectors under the feet of the tin to help stop some of the denting that is bound to happen. 

Inside the tin is a folded down thick garbage bag. It isn’t necessarily needed, but just gives me a little extra feeling of insurance… just in case something leaks or spills.

A 5 gallon bucket is the final layer. 

Yup, with rocks on the bottom.  

Finally the wrapped tree goes in the 5 gallon bucket:

I hold the tree as straight as I can while my husband starts dumping/pouring rocks in the bucket.

We use white marble chips and have saved them from over the years. They maybe show a little, but just washed gravel would work too. 

The first year we used this new unique Christmas tree stand method, we didn’t have too many choices for landscape stone at the store. The pre-bagged marble chips were about it in December up here in the Midwest. If you run into the same thing, let me give you a tip! Don’t do like we did and dump the chips into the bucket in the living room fresh from the bag. There is a TON of rock dust in those pre-bagged rocks. Wow, that was kind of a huge mess! I’d recommend dumping them into a bucket outside first to get the dust separated from the rocks before you bring it indoors.

Also, another tip: It’s much easier to leave the tree wrapped for the dumping of the rocks. We’re kind of slow learners… 

We’ve had the tree open and then had to hand place the rocks in the bucket be case there wasn’t room to dump them. That took so much longer!  

Here you can see the bucket about half full. Depending on the size of tree, the bucket needs to be full or even extra placed in the container outside the bucket for extra large trees. This year our tree is so little, we barely needed to fill the bucket more than this. 

The bottom branches of the tree will need to be cut so that they aren’t forced to bend up to clear the top of the bucket.

Here’s a tip…

Leave a few inches of ‘stubs’ on those bottom branches you snip off, it’ll give the rocks something to ‘grab’ onto and stabilize the tree even better. 

Our tree has never ever even come close to falling over since we finally figured out this unique Christmas tree stand. 

Another great thing about using a 5 gallon bucket is that it holds a lot of water. Which means much less frequency in watering the tree. 

This is showing the tree all finished, using this unique Christmas tree stand method. This picture was from a few years ago at our 100 year old house. 

See what I mean about the bottom of the branches needing to be cut off so that they don’t get in the way of the sides of the bucket? It does leave for lot of space below the tree, which is my preference anyway. 

Here are a couple other unique Christmas ideas:

Over the years, I’ve set a small tree on a drum for a little added height and a fun base for the kid’s tree:

I don’t have a picture of it, but I used to have a gorgeous antique bass drum that I used to set the small tree on. Some years, I’d put the electric train around it. That was such a charming Christmas tree display when my kids were little. Since then though, I had a friend that had a musician husband, so she got the bass drum and I started using this smaller snare drum for a smaller tree:

That calico tree skirt is the first one I made 40 Christmases ago, the first year we were married. 🙂

I made these matching stockings too:

This picture was from our 100 year old house too…

In the attic we finished, there was an exposed brick chimney, but no fireplace, so I hung these stockings on an old ladder we had next to the chimney. 

(To see more about that 100 year old house renovation, including this attic, be sure to check out this page ‘Our 100 Year Old House‘ always found at the top of this blog under ‘Houses‘ 

Here are more posts on Christmas decorating:

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This post is linked up to these other sites: Between Naps on the Porch, Refresh Restyle, DIY Showoff