Tomato Cage Christmas Trees

 

 Tomato Cage Christmas Trees

I love to decorate for Christmas, but for some crazy reason, I rarely put up decorations around my door or on my front porch, other than my favorite Christmas wreath.  However, this year, the in-laws were coming for Christmas, so I decided to make my front porch a little more festive! I've always loved the sparkly trees that come in pretty urns for Christmas, but those were a little out of my budget.  So, after watching an episode of P. Allen Smith Garden Home a few weeks back, I decided to give making my own trees a try.  I was really surprised how easy they were to make.  

I got almost all of the supplies I needed at my local Home Depot.  The rest were leftover Christmas decorations or supplies.   For this project I used the following supplies:

2 metal tomato cages (they cost less than $4 each)
2 boxes of 144 mini net light sets (the kind that go over shrubs, etc)
Duct tape
wire Christmas ornament hooks
30 foot roll of green mesh
Christmas ribbon

The first thing I did was use the Duct tape to secure the loose ends of the tomato cages to form a point (the top of my Christmas tree).

Next, I wrapped the net Christmas tree lights around the tomato cage starting at the bottom and working my way up the cage, securing the lights by using the wire ornament hooks as twist ties.

Then wrap the green mesh around the tomato cage, starting at the bottom.  (Sorry no picture for this step)  When you get to the top of the "tree", take the remaining mesh and tie a bow with some pretty Christmas ribbon.  To hold the mesh in place, I used a few more wire ornament hooks to secure the mesh to the cage.  That's it!  You're done! 

Note:  In this example, I used lime green mesh that I had left over from another project.  I think if I were to make these again, I would buy a darker green color mesh.  When not lit up, they looked fine, but when I turned them on at night, the mesh looked more "yellowish" than I would have liked.
 

Here is what they looked like lit up on my porch with the decorations around my door and the matching wreath I made.  

 Simple wreaths I made to hang below my coach lights on each side of the garage.

 Here is the simple wreath I literally threw together with all of the leftover mesh, 

ornaments and ribbon.  Not too bad for being made from scraps!

I hope you had a very Merry Christmas and that the New Year is full of blessings for you and your family.

Blessings,

Melony

aka Cleverly Creative Girl