Christmas Decorating Tips for Tiny Living!
The point of this post is to give some Christmas Decorating tips for tiny livers. I may love to cook and find this hard while tiny living but the first year trying to figure out how to decorate for Christmas was my biggest challenge. My family kept telling me they were upset we would not be able to decorate the area was just to small we would not be able to have a tree or the Christmas village and on and on. So I really started looking at ways I could make this work yes the first year we had a table top tree and a few lights that was it and seeing the look on my mothers face said it all she was crushed so the following year I started pulling my hair out when it got closer to Christmas. I really started trying to think like a crafty person my family thinks I am and I came to a few ideas. When I told my mother she looked like she wanted to slap me for suggesting my ideas and I explained using these ideas I would be able to decorate better so she let me do my ideas. Once I was what I considered almost done it started to grow on her and that's when I told her I figured out a way to have a real Christmas tree in the Fifth Wheel as well and that changed everything now these decorating ideas are our traditions and I want to pass them on to someone else who lives tiny.
First I ran Christmas lights all around the border of the Fifth Wheel this involved a lot of climbing and asking for help down off the counters but I made it work. Then since my mother has a Christmas village that has gone up since I was a little girl I had to figure out how to have this out and no one knock it over or it be in our way, also had to keep in mind we had dogs. On a Fifth Wheel you have what is called tip outs, this is where the bedrooms come out of the house and the living room comes out as well and it leaves these ledges inside the house. I took the village snow and all and put it on the ledges and carefully wrapped lights through it. Next I wrapped the cupboard doors with wrapping paper so they looked like packages. This was cute but I suggest if you have people that go in and out of cupboards and do not pay attention I would not waste the time it takes. I say this because by the end of the first week we were ripping the wrapping off the cupboards we got into most often due to people ripping the paper.
Now for someone like my mom who LOVES Christmas decorations and is used to more than just lights, a village, and some wrapped cupboards I thought out of the box. I purchased different kinds of ornaments and used red yarn to make them hang at different lengths. I then started tacking the yarn to the ceiling at this point I finally have my mom's curiosity and I can tell she is behind me watching me as I do this. Did I mention everything has to be in order or certain distant apart I really do not like change dishes have to be put in cupboard exactly so. This habit made hanging the ornaments a chore however this task does get easier in following years because now I climb my little step stool and see the tack hole and know that is where an ornament hangs. The next item on the list is a Christmas tree I get my son and younger sister involved to work on my mom because we want a real tree not her traditional "Fake tree". My mom takes some convincing because she is worried the dogs will knock it over and here is where my next crafty trick comes in. We had a little side table in the house that really was just a catch all on top and a dog feeder on the bottom. I explain I will put the tree on this table but it does not have to be table top tree size. By the time the kids and I are done my mom has a 5 foot tree on her table and it is fully decorated the dogs can not reach it and if someone walks into the tree and knocks it over well honestly that is their own fault.
This year will be the third year we have been able to decorate the Fifth Wheel for the holidays and each year I add a new way to do something. This year my mom has a tree that touches her ceiling with the tree topper and I have expanded her village so she has her whole village up. I know some of this sounds funny however, it really does look pretty I call her ceiling the Macy's look and it really has grown on the rest of the family. (I will post pictures ASAP). Just because you choose to live in a Tiny house does not mean you have to give up decorating for the holidays, you can do even a little amount of decorating. I know storage is an issue however I have two Plastic totes put aside for Christmas one has the village the other has everything else. I also use these two totes during Christmas time for gifts since they are empty and not see through they work great to hide gifts as long as only select few know this. I hope after reading this you have a few tips you can use to brighten up your holidays.