And the winner is….

Thanks to everyone who entered the Christmas Tree competition. This is just a small selection of the 400 entries we received!

A  Clondalkin woman is this year’s winner of the The Echo’s annual Christmas tree competition.

Louise Twamley is this year’s lucky winner of the Christmas tree competition and is over the moon with her success.

She entered the competition without realising that she had a chance of winning this year’s instalment and now has a €100 shopping voucher as her prize.

Louise said: “I couldn’t believe it! I was like ‘oh god, really?’ I never win anything…I might treat myself.”

The Clondalkin local took a day to decorate her tree, hit by a perfectionist bug that afflicts so many at Christmas, trying to find the right spot for each decoration.

She had several tries at getting all the decorations in the right place and with the help (and mischief) of her children created our winner.

“The tree took me about a day, in fairness, because kids kept putting them on when I was taking them off and putting them back on…I have to go outside to make sure you can see all the lights.”

The work complements other decorations put up outside of the house on the window ledges and on the door frame and also complements the room it resides in.

The sitting room’s colour was brought into the brainstorming and the tree’s lights complement it.

Louise recalled her mother’s strategy every Christmas that had no such coordination of colour involved in the lighting.

Louise noted that she will miss her mother, Elizabeth, this year, after she passed in April, and felt her competition victory was the little lift that she needed.

Her win only adds to her favourite part of the holiday season, watching the joy that materialises under the tree she put so much time into.

“It’s putting up the tree and then Christmas morning, seeing the kids opening all the presents under it and just the excitement like.”