DIY Holiday Decor: Tomato Cage Christmas Trees

Despite a hectic Thanksgiving holiday weekend that involved my husband having knee surgery and the care-taking that followed, I somehow managed to find time to decorate for Christmas. I put up the tree and brought out all the usual indoor decor (although some of it remained in the storage tubs because I'm running out of places to put things upstairs... yet another reason why I can't wait until the basement is finished). But I digress...

For the past four years of living in our house, we've never been much for decorating the outside for Christmas. No lights on the roof, no lighted Santa or reindeer in the yard. Just a wreath on the door (because that's easy and I'm lazy).

But a few months ago, I was totally inspired by this pin for a tomato cage Christmas tree... the seed had been planted (pun intended).

[ original source ]

Just turn a tomato cage upside down instead of staking it into the ground, and you have an instant Christmas tree structure. Genius! 


I was even more excited about the idea because this summer we had actually bought three tomato cages for my vegetable "garden" (I use this word very loosely). Although my first tomato experience was a travesty, I was glad to know the cages wouldn't be a waste of money come winter. I would redeem myself with tomato cage Christmas trees!

What made this project even better is that I already had garland and strand lights, which weren't being used for anything else. I decided to wrap just two of the cages in garland (because I ran out after the second one, but we'll just pretend that was my plan from the beginning). The remaining tomato cage would be decorated only in lights. 

If you need some extra Christmas lights or garland to make some tomato cage trees of your own, there's always Amazon.  Sometimes it beats dealing with crowds at the store!

      

I took all three trees back outside, placing two in our rock landscaping and one on the porch. It took a little while to wrap the lights around them, and I had just enough by the time I finished with the final tree on the porch. 

At that point, I was so excited to light them up, but it was still daylight so I'd have to wait a few more hours to get the full effect. Luckily I had plenty of things to do in the house to pass the time. Once the sun had set and it was sufficiently dark, I plugged in the lights and stepped back to take a look... I love how they turned out - simple but such a pretty effect!

I might have to buy another strand of lights to add to the tree in the middle, since I didn't have as much as I would have liked for that one. But for now the most important thing is that we don't look like scrooges anymore from the outside. Oh, and did I mention the total cost for this DIY Christmas decor was only $12 for the tomato cages? That's my kind of project! Who needs tomatoes, anyway? 

Okay, your turn... What holiday DIY decor projects are you planning this year?

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