Spruced Up, a Macon, Georgia, business, curates kits to decorate magazine spread-worthy Christmas trees with minimal effort.
Story by Mary Dansak, Photos by Erin Cruise Photography
For Anna Claire Stietenroth, her current life as a Congressperson legislative assistant on Capitol Hill couldn’t be farther from her upbringing in Macon, Georgia. There, her parents live six minutes away from her grandmother, and extended family is physically and emotionally close. For her, the winter holidays are a treasured part of the season, especially as aunts, uncles, cousins, and now those same cousins’ young children converge at the matriarch’s home for Christmas.
It’s a time to catch up, play games, drink wine, and enjoy “a big meal Grandma stresses about making for months before,” she says, and the house is filled with running feet, hands eager for gifts and snacks, laughter that peals like jingle bells, and smiles as bright as the lights on the tree. Decorating ‘O Tannenbaum’ is her most cherished Christmas tradition.
“It’s what we love to do, my mom and I,” she says. “We go shopping every year when I go home, starting with Thanksgiving, and visit the stores I grew up going to. The boutiques are so cute in Macon; we love going to see the new Christmas tree ornaments in the stores and windows. So every year, we think about how we can make our tree look just like a display tree.”
But for that kind of wow factor, it not only takes a great eye, but access to quality, heirloom, and artisan decorations and the one thing everyone is short on these days: time. Because even experienced decorators like Anna Claire and her mother often find themselves getting home, ready to tackle the tree, only to have to run out again as they realize they’re short a section of baubles or missing the luxury detail that will add that oomph. And it was their most recent “oops” moment that inspired Spruced Up.
She recalls, “Because I now live in DC, we wanted to put the tree up while I was home during Thanksgiving. My mom and I were talking in the car about how we wanted a really colorful pastel tree, how much time we’d already spent on it, and yet still didn’t quite have the look we wanted it. There was one type of tree topper we had in mind, and we were frustrated that we couldn’t find it or the materials to make it anywhere, and we were missing so much time with the family.
“I wondered, why isn’t there someone who can ship decorations to your door? Decorations that feel handcrafted, luxurious …? And oh my gosh, wouldn’t it be fun and great if we could spend more time decorating and less time tracking down quality pieces instead of browsing through big box stores?”
After all, a family Christmas tree, in her opinion, should be beautiful, personal, and timeless ... not disposable, with decorations that fall in and out of fashion or aren’t made to withstand years of use.
“They’re investments,” Anna Claire believes, and a part of building a family’s story. Yet they are often overlooked or rushed, as she noticed with friends getting engaged, married, or sharing a home and life together.
“When you move into your new house together, a Christmas tree is last on your list,” she says, and can be a costly last-minute expense that adds up piecemeal.
For example, according to a recent report by Bankrate, Americans spent an average of $231 in 2021 on holiday decorations and non-gift items. Adjusting for inflation, this increases annually and compounds over time, as it only accounts for new purchases, which are typically add-ons to existing collections or replacements for broken budget pieces. And this certainly doesn’t account for time lost running solo errands when instead, you could already be decorating with loved ones.
Between the time she met back up with her fiancé at the airport in Rome, Georgia — where he was visiting his own family — and the time she boarded the plane back to DC, she had commissioned a logo design from Eliza Bishop of Birmingham’s Paper Eliza (“I’ve been following her and buying her stationery for years,” Anna Claire raves) and began working with her fiancé and fellow MBA student on a logistics plan and creating an LLC. Soon after, she was in talks with the bridal registry Over the Moon. Now, nearly a year later, three styled semi-custom assemblies are officially available for soon-to-weds.
However, it’s the fact that it’s a full family affair that made this possible in a Christmas miracle span of time.
Not only is Anna Claire acting as CEO of Spruced Up whenever she’s not at Capitol Hill, she leans on her fiancé and stepfather’s supply chain education and project management experience, respectively, to support its growth and development. Most importantly, she’s partnered with her mother as curators for the nascent company’s collections, currently scaled for seven and nine-foot trees.
“My mom is a retired public school teacher and works at a Catholic school, and my stepdad works at the Kaolin mines,” she shares.
But when they’re not at their day jobs, “We talk about it all day, every day now,” she says with warmth. “There’s lots of phone calls and texts, sending a lot of messages, and a lot of in-person.”
Where she used to visit Macon every two and a half months, she now joyfully finds she has reason to return home every month to work with her mom in person to design, source, and check the quality of their individually selected ornaments.
Together, they’ve finalized a series of high-end, hand-painted European ornaments by way of Jinglenog that “we put together to create a neat look,” she says. “All of them have a homey feeling to them; they look like you can put them with something you’ve had since you were little and it’d go together seamlessly, so there’s room for keepsakes.
“We’ve also got some from Jim Marvin, who has designed White House Christmas trees for years and years and started making handblown glass baubles that are part of our big assortment” as the focus is on a classic look that will accentuate other ornaments and last through decades.
But for the heart, thoughtful Southern touches add traditional dignity and warmth.
Anna Claire says, “We’re working with Fig & Dove in Baton Rouge for tree skirts; we’re carrying bauble stockings that are cute and handknit in Atlanta, and a lot of ribbons from D. Stevens in Dallas as well as Farrisilk,” for higher quality wired garlands built to last. Additionally, as a member of Southern Coterie, a group of female entrepreneurs, she’s putting local artists suitable for the luxury market on her radar for future growth.
However exciting the future for Spruced Up may be, though, the greatest gift the new company may have to offer Anna Claire is even more reason to hold onto the holiday spirit of joy, love, and close contact with family all through the year as they work to share it with others.
UNBOXING SPRUCED UP: WHAT TO EXPECT
Within every kit, buyers can expect more than 100 ornaments (roughly 25 specialty and 79 glass ornaments of varying sizes) for a 7-foot tree and more for the 9-foot kit. They also get six feet of reusable ribbon, a tree topper, tree skirt, designer wire (“That helps you get closer to the branch for that magazine/designer look,” Anna Claire confides), and stick-in pieces that vary by kit, such as florals like hydrangeas, tassels, and more. All components come in a decorated, padded box that can and should be reused for storage, and a step-by-step guide with pro tips on how to decorate essentially by numbers for that polished, full look.
The semi-custom element means the option to choose your own tree skirt, add matching stockings, and themed boxes around commemorative events like the birth of a baby.
“We’re also going to do a Build Your Own Box feature, with options for colors as the next step,” she says.
Shipping is free and prices begin at $4,078 depending on size and style — a roughly 30% discount off buying each piece individually, Anna Claire says.
Kit recipients may count invaluable time saved in shopping. They can use those precious moments to make the most of quality time spent decorating, and memories of hands-on assembling with decorations that are already heirlooms remain priceless.
