Ours is a fake with hinged branches, after our 14 year old Building 19 manual fake put-together tree started looking ragged, and dropped as many needles as a real tree! We don't decorate according to color or theme-we put up whatever we like-shiny, country, modern, stuffed, sewn, metal, ceramic...
The kids did a really great job this year with it. I can't get a full picture of the tree until I DL a picture somewhere on the web, though.