Toddler-Proof Christmas Tree Ideas

Chances are the Christmas of 2014 was the last one when I got to use all my carefully selected and colour-harmonised Christmas tree ornaments for a long time. Bobcat was only 8 months old and was only crawling. When I had to leave the room, I just popped him into his playpen. Now, that he’s 20 months old, it’s a different story. I will have to find new ways to make the tree out of his reach or even if he gets his hands on it we won’t end up at the A&E.

So I explored my favourite bloggers and Pinterest accounts for inspiration and you can check them out on my new inspirational board I created on Pinterest: Captain Bobcat Pinterest

• Use a playpen as a tree-pen to keep curious little hands away from the tree. If you have an old playpen or baby gate, build it up around the Christmas tree. You can even decorate it with toddler safe decoration: paper garlands or plastic ornaments. It will also help you to keep the presents unopened 🙂 With this trick you can also have your fave ornaments and a big tree, it also saves money, as you don’t need to invest into anything else but the tree. This might not be the prettiest solution, but definitely effective.
• Place it on a high table so they can’t reach it. This option will limit the height of the tree, but you can maybe have 2 or even 3 smaller Christmas trees around the house this year, decorated differently. A true challenge for crafty mummies and those who love decorating. There’s some great examples: Christmas tree on the table or this really nice design from Gus and Lula Christmas Tree On The Top Of The Piano I also found some interesting designs Easy Table Top Christmas Trees by Better Homes And Gardens.

• Create children friendly decoration. The biggest worry when it comes to Christmas trees that they either pull it over or they can eat or break an ornament.

Paper decoration. It’s good fun to make decoration together with your children. Bobcat is still a bit small for this, so maybe next year. You can make paper garlands from colourful scrap paper. Or cut out ornaments using printable templates. Here’s a couple of nice downloadable templates:

Printable Tree Ornaments

Cut Fold Paper Stars

Mini Paper Angels

Jumbo Christmas Lights Print Out

Make edible ornaments! That’s my plan at least. I’m going to have a smaller tree on the top of a table. Since I was a child with my mum (who’s rubbish at baking, hates it too) we baked a huge load of Lebkuchen every Christmas. That was our tradition. Then we decorated them with nuts, raisins and white sugar paste. Lebkuchen is similar to ginger cookies, but it’s normally made with honey, a German Christmas treat. Here’s a couple of ideas in photos:

First photo: Thekitchn.com Second photo: Cakejournal.com Third photo: Kerrycooks.com

Felt ornaments. This is really cute and the kids will love it. It does require some degree of craftiness, but they will be forever used and cherished because they will always bring back sweet memories. Here’s some easy to follow tutorials: 10 DIY Felt Christmas Ornaments and another one from Lia Griffith, how to make cute felt animals step-by-step: Felt Fox Ornament Think you can’t do that or no time? Buy them on Etsy: Danielle London her shop has lots of cute and quirky stuff. Alternatively have a look around on Folksy: Sonia Adams designs are great too.

Check out my Pinterest board for toddler friendly Christmas trees and stay tuned for my Lebkuchen Ornaments, arriving to my blog next week!