It’s the Sunday after Thanksgiving, which means Christmas is officially less than a month away. Can you guess what I did today?

If you guessed “put up a Christmas tree,” you win! Sorry, there are no prizes here, but go ahead and pat yourself on the back if you want.

Given the size of my apartment, my Christmas tree is a little different from others. I have a dress form named Frenchy (she has a lot of French printed on her), so during the holiday season I like build a Christmas tree skirt around her so that I don’t lose any space.

Making a skirt like this is actually pretty simple, though it does require time, patience, and putting up with a lot of things poking you.

Here are the necessary supplies:

The frame of the skirt will be the plastic chicken wire (or poultry fence as the store preferred to call it).

Pin the chicken wire to the waist of the dress form with one some heavy-duty pins (they’ll have quite a bit of weight to hold).

I went for only a slightly a-line skirt, but in order to get a wider A-line shape, you’ll need to pin it as tightly as possible at the top, then gently pull it wider from the bottom, tying the overlapping wire together every so often to hold it in place (I used ribbon that matched my ornaments so it’d be pretty).  Remember, the more overlap you start with, the bigger your skirt can be, so don’t cut your section of wire too short.

Once you have your frame in place, weave your garland through it until you reach the desired fullness. I used three longer pieces of garland to simply wrap around the frame to hide as much of the wire as possible, then cut the rest into smaller chunks to make the “branches” that stick out for the ornaments to hang on. (Pro tip: if you run out of garland,  bigger ornaments can hide quite a bit.)

Voila! A cute alternative for your Christmas decorating is done. (Now go vacuum up all the loose garland in your carpet!)