How to Transform a Christmas Tree into a Valentine's Day Tree

With a little over a week until Valentine's Day, I thought I'd share what I did with my dining room Christmas tree this year. Instead of packing it away with all the other Christmas decorations in early January, I left it up and changed the decorations to make it into a vintage Valentine's Day tree.

Here's what it looks like now:

Valentines Trees are becoming increasingly popular, and you see a lot of them using pink, white, or vintage aluminum (silver) trees. I wanted to see if I could make a Valentine Tree with a regular green Christmas tree base. 

For this particular tree, I started out with my dining room Christmas tree, which is a green pencil tree with colored lights. It looks like this at Christmas:

I removed all of the candy-themed ornaments, the tree topper, and the tree skirt, until I was left with just the bare, lit tree. (If you have a lot of red or pink ornaments on your tree, you can leave those on the tree and just remove any Christmas-y ornaments.)

After removing all the Christmas ornaments, it was easy to create a Valentine Tree! I gathered my supplies and then added them to the tree in the order listed below. 

What Supplies Do I Need to Make a Vintage Valentine Tree?

• red and/or pink vintage glass ornaments
• vintage Valentine's Day cards
• small heart-shaped candy boxes
• floral picks to create ornaments and a tree topper
• pink or red fabric to create a tree skirt

This first batch of Valentine's Day cards are actually from The Harris Sisters' childhood. My favorite one might be the one that says "I like you for a lot of raisins" and shows some sort of odd raisin cake. You can read our thoughts on Raisin Creme Pies here. And check out that Amazing Spider-Man card - guess Spider-Man was just as popular in 1980 as he is now.

This next batch of Valentine's Day cards are some that I've collected. They are much older than The Harris Sisters' stash above, and they all have great graphics!

Here's some close ups of the collection:

And the next most important decoration for the tree was a collection of pink and red vintage glass Christmas ornaments. Red is a popular color for Christmas ornaments, so you probably have some similar ornaments stashed away too! I only have about a 1/2 box of pink ones, but they look right at home on the Valentines Tree.

And after adding the vintage ornaments and the Valentine's Day cards, I used floral picks to create a set of conversation heart ornaments, a few larger heart ornaments, and a tree topper. I nestled two small heart-shaped candy boxes into the branches. The cards are also just nestled into the branches, and they seem to be staying put with no further assistance. If you'd like to secure them a little better, you can use small clothespins to clip them to the branches without damaging the cards. I wrapped a pink floral tablecloth around the base of the tree to create a tree skirt. (If your Christmas tree has a plain red tree skirt, then you're good to go!)

Here's the finished product:

Make sure you check out these other Harris Sisters blog posts for ideas on how to decorate for Valentine's Day:

• O Valentine Tree! O Valentine Tree! (vintage Disney cards on an aluminum tree)
• A Valentine-y Kitchen Tour
• Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice
• Pink Depression Glass

Hope we've inspired you to keep a tree up and decorate it for Valentine's Day. (If you're a person who hates putting away all the Christmas decorations because you'll miss the lights, this would be a great solution to keep those lights out longer!)

Happy Valentine's Day!