We tried to be creative with the Christmas tree, with so many kittens in the house. The older cats are not as much of a concern, but the little ones are another story!
Well, after several days of cat caused disasters, today I came into the dining room to find they’d trashed the tree. For the past few morning, I’d come out and find the tree skirt askew, ornaments on the floor, and branches bent. Clearly, they knew enough to wait until we were in bed to wreck havoc. However, this time, they’d gone in while we were all busy and done even more damage than what I’d already fixed in the morning. The tree was tied to the wall, so they couldn’t knock it over, but they clearly were climbing it as high as the ceiling, and trying to get into the shelves beside it, as even things from there were on floor. Nothing fragile, thankfully, but still…
After finding the last mess, I gave up.
I took the tree down completely – which only took a few minutes, considering we’d already decorated it sparsely.
My older daughter, who lent us her little tree to begin with, saved the day.
It turns out this tree can be flattened, without damaging it. She found a way to hang it flat against the door, then redecorated it.
She even used wrapping paper to hide the base, where the legs would normally be attached.
I think it looks even better now!
Later, I actually caught some cats under it, looking up forlornly.
The Christmas tree is decorated as much as it’s going to be, and the base is covered.
Theoretically, the cats can still get inside the planter stand near the floor, but now that the stand it stabilized, it should be okay if they do. The tree skirt will hopefully be too “in the way” for them to want to jump up the stand anymore. Hopefully, they won’t try to climb it, instead!
Tonight will be the big test. While we are all in bed, will the cats leave it alone?
So with the destructiveness of the cats, we had pretty much decided not to have a tree, but to decorate in other ways, instead.
But I still wanted a tree.
This morning, I went ahead and started working on it.
I ended up screwing small cup hooks into a wall and a shelf, then used some paracord to hold the plant stand we’ve got under the tree.
After I spent time fixing the bent branches on the tree. I didn’t have much luck straightening the “trunk”, though.
For the ornaments, I focused on the smelly ones! We didn’t bother bringing up all our decorations, but the bin the garlands and advent wreath were in, had a couple of boxes of ornaments in it that I picked through.
Here is as far as I’ve gotten, so far.
The little embroidered “pillows” at the top are scented. The rest have all sorts of dried spices on them. Of course, the dehydrated orange slices, with their dusting of ground spices, are there as well. The only non-smelly things on there are the birds I’m using as tree toppers.
I was then left with a mystery.
What did I do with the dehydrated orange slice decorations I didn’t dust with spices? I had to put them where the cats wouldn’t get at them, but there are only so many places that could be!
I just spent the last hour, trying to figure it out, but it wasn’t until I started writing this that I finally remembered. I’d hung them on a stick, then hung the stick up, out of reach of the kitties.
Once I’m done this post, I’ll go finish decorating! :-D
So far, while the cats were VERY interested while I was putting on the lights and garlands, they have not been going for the tree.
When it’s done, I will hopefully have the base and paracord covered in such a way that it will discourage the cats from trying to jump up into it. I might be able to use our tree skirt, after all!
The other experiment I tried was to make a baking soda and cornstarch dough (which I wrote about here), which was supposed to be good to roll out and use cookie cutters on. These are supposed to result in a bright white final product, that was also quite hard and durable, which would take paint or other embellishments well. The dough ended up way too soft and sticky, so my daughters used it to make more sculptural stuff, though one did try and do some cookie cutter ones when the dough seemed to have dried up enough for it.
After leaving them to dry for a while, we ended up having to put them in a cool oven (they were supposed to dry slowly, to avoid cracking), because… cats.
Cats who leave paw prints behind, as they do dastardly things!
All of the cookie cutter ones have had to be thrown out. They just crumbled.
Plus, the cats seem to be desperate to get at them! I had to take them out of the oven to put the decorated orange slices in, and had to get really creative in covering them, while still giving them air flow to dry. There is still some hope for the more sculptural pieces, but they will need at least a few more days to fully dry.
If we can keep the cats out.
As for the orange slices, the cats have been after them, too! They ended up knocking over the tray on the table they were laid out on.
I’m happy to say that the glue worked very well.
Several of the decorations were scattered on the floor and, while the glue was not yet completely dry, it held! This was a bottle of WeldBond that came with a case of crafting materials given to us. I have no idea how many years it was there, but it was long enough that the plastic and cardboard pieces of the original packaging came apart.
Clearly, the cats are not put off by the orange slices and cinnamon sticks.
Today, I decided to add ground spices to 7 of the 13 slices.
First, I rigged up a cardboard box that I could use to spray them with adhesive.
I also decided to use a combination of ground cloves, allspice and nutmeg, with a tiny sieve to apply them evenly.
After crowding the decorations close together, I tried to spray just the orange slices, not the strings, then dusted them with the ground spice mix.
They are now set aside for the spray adhesive to set. The box set up allowed me to put something over them in case a cat decided to jump into it.
Since I started writing this, I’ve had to go put the cover back and add weight to it, because the cats had already knocked it off.
The main thing about doing this craft was that citrus and all these spices that smell so good to humans are supposed to deter cats.
Our cats apparently did not get that memo.
*sigh*
I’m still holding out hope to having a tree, somehow, but these spicy, fragrant decorations are definitely not going to keep them away. If anything, it seems to be attracting them, instead!
Today, I finally started working on the Christmas decorations I was planning to make with the dehydrated orange slices I’d prepared earlier.
Of course, things didn’t work out to plan! :-D
Do they ever? ;-)
I was going to use cinnamon sticks, plus some little decorations I’d saved from Christmas crackers over the years – they would have been the perfect size – to decorate the orange slices.
I couldn’t find them.
Many of these were collected before we moved, and now I’m second guessing myself. Did I bring them along with my other craft stuff, or did I give them away before the move? I had to pare things down quite a lot for the move.
And yet… I’m sure I saw them since the move, as I’ve had to reorganize my crafting materials a couple of times, since unpacking them.
No worries, though, I decided to use some pine cones I’d gathered from our spruces a while back.
I didn’t have enough to put two on each slice, though. We kept finding them with our feet, around the house, before I discovered one of our cats digging in the container they were in, stealing a pine cone, and running off!
I had enough left for this project, though. I just made sure the biggest cones went on the smaller slices, and paired up the smallest cones on the bigger slices.
Now, I just need to see if the adhesive will work. If not, I’ll break out the hot glue gun, but it’s not like anything is going to stick to dried orange slices very well! :-D
I haven’t decided if I will do more to these or now. I might use a spray adhesive on them, and dust them with ground cloves. It’s more about making them smell unappetizing to cats than anything else! :-D
For many years, I would craft new decorations for our Christmas tree. It was a good opportunity to use small projects to try out new techniques and ideas. Our tree is basically a mad chaos of different styles and materials, and I love it!
Life got in the way, and I stopped doing this for many years. I was able to do a few last year, and I’m hoping to be able to continue this yearly tradition.
With so many cats in the house, though, we’re going to have a much smaller tree, set high off the ground! We’re still trying to figure out how to manage that, but the cats have inspired ideas for this year’s decorations.
Cats are supposed to not like citrus, so I will be using dried orange slices as the foundation of the decorations.
Last night, I sliced two naval oranges and laid them out on a rack in a baking pan. I set our oven to “warm” (170F) and left them overnight. I did have the opportunity to turn them a couple of times, since I was up anyway, investigating the crashing and banging that woke me up (I found Layendecker on the fridge, and a decorative jar with seashells on it was on the floor in the dining room; I’ll have to figure out how to remove the broken seashells to replace them. :-( ).
This morning, one of my daughters took a dried slice and showed it to some cats.
I don’t think they’re going to work as cat repellent! :-D
I plan to include cinnamon sticks in the decorations, too – something else that cats are supposed to not like. I don’t think it’ll help, since in the past, we’ve had cats try and steal our cinnamon apple dough decorations, right off the tree!
Well, even if it doesn’t work, we’ll have new decorations for the tree this year! :-D
We are a bit behind on our Christmas decorating this year.
Usually, we start at least by Nov. 27 (the Feast of St. Catherine). However, this Christmas is a first for 3 felines.
So we set up the tree, but left it alone. We didn’t even fluff out the branches. The idea being, the cats can get used to the tree being there, and we can start training them to stay out of it, using a spray bottle.
The problem with that, however, is someone has to be in the room to catch them in the act, and we don’t exactly hang out in the dining room.
It’s going to take pliers to straighten some of these branches out. :-D
We can, however, start decorating the rest of the house. Tomorrow is the first day of Advent, so I at least want to get our Advent wreath and its candles set up.
I just have to figure out which of the bins it got put into. :-)
While putting up a few more Christmas decorations, I took the time to change out the batteries for some lights in our nativity scene.
It is the teeniest of nativity scenes. The tallest figures are maybe three inches high.
I used to put the trees on the dash of our old van for Christmas. I spent a lot of time in that van, so I decorated the dash with all sorts of bling and tiny creatures. Sometimes, while stopped at a red light, I would look over and see people in the vehicle next to us, taking pictures of it. :-D I figured, if I was going to be in the van so much, I may as well make it my happy place! :-D One year, I got a mini Christmas tree with a tiny string of lights for the dash. I couldn’t find it the next year, so I got a different tree, this one with its own decorations, and another set of tiny lights. The year after that, I found both sets, and had two trees on my dash! While parked, waiting for whomever I was picking up at the time, I would turn the lights on for a little ambiance. :-D
I started decorating the dash of the van we have now, but the surface is different, and the temporary adhesives don’t stick as well. I only managed a bit of bling, my Happy Face (a rockfish), a toad, some turtles, tortoises, frogs and lady bugs.
Also, the toad is holding a tiny Groot.
I don’t spend anywhere near as much time in the van anymore, so I don’t plan to add too much more. And no Christmas trees this year, so they get to join the nativity scene. :-)
The Re-Farmer 