Although we love walking through the canyons of trees for sale on New York City streets,  we haven’t been able to wrap our heads around buying and decorating a Christmas tree. Lately, we’ve seen a number of festive alt-Christmas trees made with inexpensive string Christmas lights: right up our last-minute alley. We can tack them to the wall, or spiral them around a modernist lamp, improvising a bit of treelike, sparkly magic. A ladder works curiously well as a form…

As does an upside down tomato cage (gardener’s use them to support their tomato plants) that you might have lying around in the garage:

We kind of love Richard Whittaker‘s tree made of cheap lights still in their plastic holders:

And although we generally hate florescent lights, we find Gareth Pugh‘s totemic tree compelling:

Lots of possibilities for impromptu ALT-Xmas trees to set a festive tone.

top photo via Shelterness
second photo down via New England Design and Construction
third photo down via unconsumption
third and fourth photos via Forever Geek.

Related posts: alt (wall) Christmas trees
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