How to Decorate for Christmas If You Live in a Small House with a Rambunctious Kitty

Being married and in our first home made me extra excited to decorate for every occasion, but especially Christmas. I started the day after Thanksgiving, which normally I think is a bit soon, but no one comes over often except for Matt's guy friends, and they wouldn't care, so I went ahead and started. It's been a drawn out process anyway. So, here's how I decorated our (perfect for us but still rather) small rental home so that it would look festive but still be as kitty-proof as possible.

Step One: Garland. It's the real stuff! Cut from cedar trees at M's grandparents' acreage. Then I wired the several branches together with floral wire and attached them to the mantle using nails carefully hammered right below the mantle shelf and more wire. I don't really have "process pictures" of this step.

I made stockings out of what I think is upholstery fabric (which Llyr adored laying on) for Matt, me, and Llyr, of course. I hung our most special ornaments on the mantle: our new "First Christmas" ornament, our pickle, and our "Wish" ornament. I worry a little about how well those nails will hold once the stockings get full, but I think they'll be all right with light items.

Step Two: Other Ornaments. What to do with the rest of my ornaments, though? They wouldn't all fit on the garland and at this point we weren't sure if we wanted to do a tree because of a) space, or lack of it, and b) kitty, who I'm sure would want to climb it. Since then I've seen some REALLY cool ideas for trees that aren't trees on buzzfeed (including drawn ones, small ones made of sticks, ones made of a ladder which actually looked pretty awesome, and another made of hanging green baubles. Check it out: http://www.buzzfeed.com/peggy/38-fabulous-diy-christmas-trees-that-arent-actual). I decided to hang some of my ornaments (not all the ones I have accrued over the years, but a favorite series, the Hallmark Puppy Love ornaments) in the area between the living room and kitchen. I used twine. The twine sags a little, but it works. There are my puppies! I also put up some of my "kid" decorations on shelves to (hopefully) keep them away from kitty.

Step Three: My Lego Train. Christmas decorations are not complete without the Lego train. I'm not sure if Llyr liked playing with it or was scared of it - he seemed to change his mind a lot. I eventually moved it out of the middle of the living room and next to one wall. I plan to pile presents in the middle of the track later on.

 Step Four: Advent Calendar. Matt asked if we'd have one like his mom always did for him and his brothers. There was a really cool idea in my Martha Stewart Magazine that used little muslin bags tied to branches, but I couldn't find any of those within the week or so after he asked me and before December started. I made little envelopes out of paper instead and hung them with ribbon and thumb tacks. Worked decently, but I had to secure a few envelopes with tape after putting the candies in them.

 Step Five:  Christmas Dragon. Matt bought me the first Christmas dragon a couple of Christmases ago. Unfortunately, he became a casualty of our kitty over the summer. Glass dragons only get to fly once, as Matt says. So the new Christmas dragon doesn't get to stay out as a decoration all the time. But his friend Mark Twain can!

 Step Six: Chalkboard Decorations. I do have "process pictures" of this one. I saw this idea (with a different quote for wall art) on Pinterest and it was genius. To get perfect font even if you don't have good handwriting (especially with chalk), just transfer the picture to the chalkboard. Basically, print out what you want to write/draw, color the entire area of the image on the back side of the paper with chalk (make it thorough), then tape the paper right side up to the chalkboard and color in every space that needs to transfer. You can go over the image again with chalk if it is too faint, but I liked the way mine turned out without doing that.

That's about all I have for now, but it has remained safe from crazy Llyr so far!