O Christmas tree! O Christmas tree! How dangerous your ornaments…
I love decorating for Christmas. The lights, the tree, the snowmen and gingerbread men. Love it. In my family, the day after Thanksgiving is THE day for Christmas decorating, so on Thanksgiving Day, when I had a horrible vision of the cats knocking down an ornament and Lincoln swallowing one of the hooks, panic set in. How was I going to have a festive tree that couldn’t also be dubbed “chocking hazard display”?
Answer: Ribbons.
I have a 7ft pre-lit artificial tree (which I love and got on sale for $65 at Home Depot 5 years ago). I just added to it 3 12ft rolls of 1.5″ ribbon (for the bows), 4 12ft rolls of 3″ ribbon for the garland, and a few yards of 1.5″ ribbon for the topper. It’s all wire-edge ribbon, and this was the quickest, easiest tree I’ve ever decorated.
I used 2 rolls of the 1.5″ ribbon in red and one in green, tied regular “shoe lace” bows, curled the ends, and just kind of set them on the tree.
My 4 rolls of the 3″ ribbon were all different, but matching types of gold. I took the ribbon from the spool, keeping the curl, tied one end to the top and did a loose wrap around the tree. One strand for the front, one for the back, and one for each side. The ribbons that ended at the back of the tree were tied to the branches at the bottom so they wouldn’t be messed up by cats and the visible ones just kind of drape at the end (since they’re easy to fix if any of the mammals that are on all fours gets a hold of it).
The topper took a few tries but was really easy once I figured out what I was doing. I just folded a loop about 18″ across, back and forth several (SEVERAL) times, flipping at the center point to keep the right side out. If you think ahead and use ribbon with no wrong side, your life will be much easier. Once I was sick of folding had enough folded, I wrapped a pipe cleaner (mine was sparkly red and matched pretty well, but you can always cover it with some ribbon if you don’t have something that matches) around the center, then fluffed up the individual folds of ribbon. I then used the ends of the pipe cleaner to attach it to the tree!
Ta-da!
**disclaimer: when I say “I” involving anything toward the top of the tree, I really mean “my husband”. I’m crazy short, and ladders aren’t my friends.**
You did such a beautiful job on the tree. Can’t wait to come see it. I’ve always wanted to do something like that but didn’t know how to go about it.
It’s so easy to do, you’ll never want to hang ornaments again!