Look at your and your family's interests and personalities. If your family enjoys a particular sport, video game or movie genre, decorate your mini tree in honor of such an interest. Find decorations not typical for tree use, such as reusable wine bottle corks for wine enthusiasts or small gardening tools for gardeners. Shop outside the holiday aisles for personal finds.
A mini tree in each child's room gives each child a chance to help decorate. Provide children with age-appropriate craft materials to make ornaments or streamers. Start a tradition of buying or making an ornament each Christmas and adding it to the child's mini tree so he eventually has one from each year. Print a variety of pictures, frame with nonacid paper and hang with ribbons. Remind your family of a fun time from earlier in the year, such as a beach getaway. Incorporate pictures, souvenirs and sand toys on the mini tree.
For a more traditional approach, research the history of Christmas trees. The earliest decorations "consisted mostly of strings of popcorn or tufts of cotton as symbols of snow on the branches," according to the Forest Preserve District of Cook County (Illinois). Chains of white or colored paper are easy for children to make. For a "tasty" tree, consider hanging candies, cookies, nuts, and fruit such as apples and oranges. To bring out the smell of the fruits, consider poking cinnamon sticks or cloves through them.
In more modern eras, people decorated trees with "manufactured strings of tinsel or glass balls." Choose a color to coordinate with different rooms of your house and buy lights, ornaments and tinsel of the same color.
Decorators also use "striped candy canes and 'icicles' of tinfoil." Expand upon this tradition by buying beautifully wrapped candies and either place them on the tree or hang them with standard metal hooks.
Christmas is a sacred and highly religious tradition for Christians. Incorporate your beliefs into a mini Christmas tree. Put a small nativity scene at the foot of the tree. Use ornaments which celebrate the Christmas miracle. Another idea from the Forest Preserve District of Cook County is to put straw at the foot of the tree to symbolize Christ's manger in Bethlehem.
Many stores carry bookmarks with biblical quotes. These bookmarks often come with tassels. Use these tassels to hang the bookmark from a tree branch. You can also disassemble a children's book that tells the story of Jesus' birth. Place a small hole at the top of the page, string the pictures on a small rope and place around the tree. Position the pictures where the front and back pages show.