How to make a cardboard Christmas Tree

Since mid November, everywhere I look on the interwebs all I see is Christmas craft. I've had the insatiable urge to whip out the glue gun ever since and the only thing stopping me is that the glue now comes out an awful baby poo brown, the result of one of my earlier forays in to sucking at craft and burning off finger appendages.

I do have a bit of the craft bug this festive season. In fact it would seem I've got an entire infestation! Hand made presents, salt dough decorations, home made advent calendar, the whole shebang. Yet no amount of activities and crafts has kept the Trickster from pulling the decorations off the real Christmas tree. After seeing a felt Christmas tree on Dear Baby G and having a little fuck-this-I-don't-touch-fabric moment, I decided to make him his own eco-friendly recycled cardboard Christmas tree! Huzzah, it'll be a green Christmas this year!

What you'll need:

• A huge bloody box from that booster seat/bookcase/wardrobe you just bought 
• Pencil & ruler (or live life on the edge and freehand it)
• Cookie cutters
• Scissors/scalpel
• Paint & paintbrushes
• Blu-tak

How to make your own cardboard Christmas tree

• Grab your giant box, draw on a Christmas tree and cut it out
• Give it to your toddler to paint, set aside (both tree & toddler) to dry
• Clean up all the paint on the floor, walls and table top
• Draw around the cookie cutters to create decorations and cut them out
• Give them to your toddler to paint
• Clean up all the paint on the floor, walls and table top.
• Wonder why you ever let a two year old paint inside
• Stick the tree to the wall
• Put blu-tak on the back of each decoration and tell the kid to go for it

Short of unsheathing the wires for the twinkle lights, how do you stop your little ones pulling decorations off the tree??