Any ideas about how to make my holiday decorations/tree fun and unique?

Hmmmm. How about a theme? Like, all pirate-esque ornaments, all bio-degradable “green” ornaments, all cat ornaments, etc.

@tinyfaery How about edible ornaments? I always thought those were fun ideas, especially since you can eat them afterwards. However if you want something that is going to last then I would suggest the retro holiday decorations and maybe at the top of the tree you could put a disco ball and with retro christmas lights! lol I’m getting excited just thinking about it. :)

what my family did this year was just two colors, red and gold, then we made it look elegant with some bows and of course white lights. everytime i look at it it gives me a happy feeling, the tree is beautiful and it’s a wonderful thing for others to look at from outside the house ;-)

In my family we have a pickle ornament. One person hides it somewhere on the tree. After Christmas, when it’s time to take the decorations off, whomever finds the pickle is said to have good luck that coming year. It’s like a family tradition.

@holden I have 5 cats. All of the ornaments will be the cats’ ornaments. :)

@Ailia I mean “retro” 50’s, but disco theme is fun. Edible ornaments will probably just attract the cats even more.

@Allie This might be a good year to start a tradition.

Every year my Mom used to get a bare tree branch and hand all the cards we got on it. It didn’t replace the Christmas tree, but that’s a thought.

Also, at any hobby store you can get very small frames—maybe 3” X 3”. I get new ones every year put pics of my kids from that year in them. It’s neat to watch how they’ve grown over the years.

@tinyfaery Oh sorry, I was a little confused with my dates apparently. And you have cats? Thats wonderful, its always great to find another cat person here. :) Now that I know this, I have a few more suggestions. Well maybe just an add-on I guess. How about making cat paw ornaments from your cats footprints? You could dip their paws in a non-toxic substance then gently press their paw against some sort of ornament. To top it off you could add lights to them and then arrange them around the tree however you want it to be. I think it would look gorgeous. :)

One year I made a dog tree. I could see a cat tree at your place with a pair of mice and chickens. :)

How about a faery theme?

@Dog & @janbb I love both of those ideas.

My art group is making ornaments this week. We bought air drying clay and will use cookie cutters on it and then paint them. You could get cat cookie cutters and paint them to look like your cats.

We are also making garland from paper beads. Instructables.com has many recipes for paper beads and they will look good strung on the tree. We also use gum nuts which abound here strung for a garland.

I love the natural look, we always choose a real tree, sometimes it is a palm tree which we later plant outside.

Make your own decorations! It will be more meaningful

This sounds really odd, but one year we decorated my mother-in-laws tree with common things from around the house. Although it was initially meant to be a joke (we did it while she was sleeping) she ended up liking it…She left it the way that it was and it was kind of neat. There was a little piece of everyone in that tree that year.

@jamielynn2328 THAT is cool…..I’ll tell my kids about it. That way all I have to do is provide a tree and cut them loose!

@Val123 Yeah, it’s a great memory. She woke up the next morning, got her coffee and was sitting at the computer desk. She didn’t notice what we had done until the Christmas tree started ringing.. Ha!!

We had a “Chriswanzukkadan” tree one year, and at the party we threw, everyone brought a decoration related to their tradition’s winter holiday.

We had the most gaudy tree you would ever see, but when I was a kid I loved it. Every squar inch had an ornament hanging from it. No color scheme or theme…just lots of everything. As @icehky06 said – we made our own ornaments. They had our names and dates on them. It was fun each year decorating as a family and walking around the tree and looking at all the ornaments. At night all the lights would be off, but the tree blinked on and off and glowed. I would lay on my back near the tree and just stare and dream for hours.

The other great tradition was “the envelope”. All the kids got an envelope of cash from dad. The envelopes would be on the tree. We looked forward to that every year.

Friends and I rented our first apartment when we were seniors in college. We chipped in together to buy a tree and a couple strings of lights, but we didn’t have any ornaments and money was tight. We sat under the lights of the tree and got inspired to do something similar to what @jamielynn2328 described. We started cutting out colorful product logos and hanging them with thread from the branches – I particularly remember several of the red & white “Coca Cola“s and Chunky candybar wrappers hanging from the tree. We hit the jackpot when I found a box of 100 cocktail toothpicks in the back of a kitchen cabinet, each with a small paper American flag attached. The American Dream tree.