Christmas in July!

This is not a throwback Thursday, friends--unless you count throwing back to Monday.

This is craigslist score Thursday!

Last Friday I scoured the interwebs for a good deal on a tall Christmas tree. I started on Amazon and quickly moved to Craigslist where I found this beautiful 12’ pre-lit Elizabeth Pine for next-to-nothing. And when you buy a 12’ Christmas tree on Craigslist for next-to-nothing, you must put it up immediately…you know, to make sure all the lights turn on and that it’s not missing a huge section in the middle. Plus, I wanted to see her in all her glory standing tall in our living room! She needs some fluffing, but is otherwise fabulous and gigantic.

Two questions:

1.       How do you decorate a tree that’s not only 12’ tall, but also has a very large diameter?? Wrap it in tinsel? Do you have any great DIY tree decorations up your sleeves? I don’t want her looking all bare and exposed…but I also don’t want to spend 1.5 mil on ornaments.

2.       How do you keep cats from chewing up the light cords? My sweetest, biggest bear, Banks, chewed mine last year NOT ONLY where it connects to the wall, but also in several places inside the tree itself making it impossible to fix. We will definitely put cord protectors over the main cords to the wall, but what about the inner ones?? I read online to put plastic straws out for them to chew on and that seems to have helped, but I feel like the Christmas tree may be so tempting that even the most desirable of straws may not distract from it. Tips? Tricks?

One more thing—the boxes the tree came in had been reduced to cardboard scraps and smelled of musty storage unit, so I went out searching for plastic containers as a replacement. I went to the container store and couldn't find anything big enough on my own, so I talked to one of the sales reps who pointed me to {this} storage bag which is perfect (I bought 3). Definitely worth looking into if you struggle to get a large tree back into a small and deteriorating cardboard box each year. 

And yes, the sales rep did ask if I was just now getting around to taking down my Christmas tree. Apparently, they don’t sell many of those bags in July.