I thought  I would share this with any mommies out there with small kids.  When my DD was 2 or 3 and I didn't want to chance her getting hurt by playing with my ornaments (or breaking them!) I decorated our tree in a special way for her.

The top half of the tree was MY tree. I put my special ornaments up there.  The bottom of the half was her tree.  We went in her room and found all the small toys and stuffed animals, like beenie babys and we put them on the bottom part of the tree.  She loved it.  She could go and arrange her ornaments to her liking.

It wasn't the most beautiful tree, but it was def. kid friendly.

DMC

I knew a family with about 8 kids, and they used to put their Christmas tree in a playpen to keep small hands from fragile ornaments. Also to protect the presents! It put a real damper on how the tree looked, but it certainly worked.

Thats a great idea though!!!

I think I shoudl have posted this thread under the Holiday Decor heading, I just noticed it.  Whoopsie! 

dmc_2008:

I think I shoudl have posted this thread under the Holiday Decor heading, I just noticed it.  Whoopsie! 

I moved it for you.  

Thank you Pat,

And thank you to all moderators!

;-)  you do a great job with this site!

I put a christmas tree in a large old square playpen before. My son at the time was 9 months old. Old enough to crawl around and get into stuff and not quite old enough to understand no. Now that my youngest is 4 years old, what I do is have two trees. The big family tree has heirloom ornaments on the top and the ones the kids made near the bottom but I also have a small little tree in their room. The tree was given to me by my parents, and they also gave us their old sets of character lights: one string of Pooh and friends, one string of Mickey Mouse and friends. For the big family tree I make a garland by stringing popcorn. For the kids tree we string fruit loops onto yarn. I got a box of satin ornaments (satin over strofoam balls) for 25 cents one year. I got a string of white lights for their tree with about 200 lights on it for $1 at a garage sale. So their tree doesn't cost much to decorate and they use whatever other ornaments they've made but I don't put on the tree (they each make the same ornaments at school every year and I don't need 2 or 3 of each one on the main tree, so pick a couple made by each one).

It seems that when the children were each very young, we were in a position of having small trees that could go up on a table or whatever. This kept it from little hands.

 Cats were another issue. I lost many decorations and one tree to the cats.

 We purchased some plastic ornaments this year.  Normally I turn my nose up at plastic but these had the "real" look and were quite affordable.  The kids could help decorate.  The cat can bat to his hearts content.  I am not cleaning up sharp pieces off the carpet.

2ndGenGranola:

The cat can bat to his hearts content

I would have been happy if the cats had only batted the ornaments. They loved climbing the tree!! I threatened to put Santa hats and bells on them and use them for decorations the next year.

 Two years ago, when I had a just 1-yr old son and a 3-yr old daughter, I found a bag of old 4-cup coffee maker filters (left over from college, I'm a pack rat), some red yarn, and bought a cylinder of snowman foamie stickers from one of the local craft stores. My daughter and I sat on the floor making cute kid-friendly snowman ornaments for the tree. We turned the filter so the narrow end was at the top, and it gave us plenty of room to create. Then, I threaded the red yarn through the top, making a loop to hang the ornaments. She LOVED the stickers, the quality time we spent together making them, and being allowed to decorate the tree herself. It was very nice not having to worry about any of the "good" ornaments beng broken. Plus, the tree looked so cute being kid-made, and having one type of decoration  made it look very "Martha"...but not quite.

The "good" ornaments were placed on garland I had strung across our windows and mantel, waaay out of reach from andy curious hands. I did this when my dog and cat were young, too. 

The cool thing about the coffee filter ornaments is that when it's time to take the tree down, you only have to keep a few of the ornaments, if you want to, and they store nice and flat! We have several on our tree this year from '06!