Family & Pets

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The holidays are a time to gather with your family members, and that includes those with fur and four legs. This is a sweet season to enjoy with everyone you love – including your pets. But it’s also a particularly risky time of year for our animal friends. To ensure that everyone has a holly, jolly, vet-visit free season, it’s important to keep pets away from holiday decor and other seasonal safety risks.

This isn’t rocket science, but it does require a little forethought. Thinking through the potential hazards for your pet now, before the season really picks up, can make it easy to avoid disasters and expensive vet bills (the last thing you need after gift shopping). Here are a few tips and trick to keep pets away from holiday decor and keep your season merry and bright.

Support your tree

You’ve probably seen plenty of cute pics of cats and dogs poking out from between the branches of a toppled tree. While that’s good for a giggle online, it’s definitely not a scenario to which you want to come home. Avoid this by giving your tree some extra support. Putting it in a weighted pot or elevating it on a pedestal can help it stay upright. For extra safety, move your most fragile ornaments to the highest branches.

Also, avoid edible tree decorations. While they might look cute, they can attract your pet to the tree. And don’t add anything to your tree water to preserve it because your pets could lap it up. A tree skirt can help deter a particularly curious pet from drinking the tree’s water.

If you’ve got a cat who loves to climb, you can also consider an alternative to the traditional evergreen tree. We’ve rounded up some unconventional Christmas trees for you.

Tuck away their presents

If you wrapped up a bone for Fido or some catnip for Fiona, don’t put it under the tree with the rest of the presents. Your furry friend can smell those tasty treats inside, and the temptation might become too much to bear. And once your pet has unwrapped one present, it’s harder to protect the rest. Instead, keep pets’ gifts in a secure, inaccessible location until it’s time for them to be opened.

Tie up cords

Stringing up holiday lights can be a lot of fun. Worrying about the electrical safety of those cords is decidedly less so. However, it’s also key, especially if you’ve got a pet who loves to chew. You’ve got a few options. You can mount the cords higher up the wall and out of your pets’ way. You can cover them with a heavy-duty cover. Or you can swap out your plug-in lights for battery operated ones. It’s easy to tuck the battery packs away from pets by stuffing them into tree branches, stockings or other protected areas.

Mind your holiday plants

A lot of the holiday classics are potentially harmful to pets, including poinsettias, holly and mistletoe. Before you bring something living into your home for the holiday season, do a quick Google search to check if it’s safe for your pets.  You might be surprised by the results – but you’ll be glad you learned the potential risks now, rather than via a trip to the vet. It’s easier to skip these toxic items altogether than to have to worry about ways to keep pets away from holiday decor all season long.

Go flameless

Candles are a holiday tradition – and hazard. An open flame is pretty risky if you’ve got pets roaming around, especially when you have guests over, overstimulating your furry friends and distracting you from their activity. Avoid this potential catastrophe by swapping out real candles for battery-operated ones. The newest options look shockingly like real flames and can even be scented. Changing out your candles gives you one less thing to worry about during the hectic holiday season.

Create a drop-off zone

While you’re cognizant of the hazards the holidays pose to your pets, your guests might not be. And during the holiday season, it’s not uncommon to have chocolate in a coat pocket or purse, or tempting tinsel topping a gift. When you’re hosting, designate a room where everyone can put their jackets, bags and gifts. Add a sign to the door (you can decorate it with holiday flair!) that reminds everyone to keep the door shut. That way, you protect your four-legged family members from risks you can’t control.

Secure your trash

With all the holiday baking and cooking you’ve got ahead of you, your trash is probably going to fill up with some pretty tempting scraps. If you have a pet who loves to paw through the trash, this is a time of year worth taking extra precautions to avoid that. Bones are especially interesting to pets, but when chewed, can break up and pose a serious threat during digestion. Move your trash to an inaccessible area, put something heavy on top of it or invest in a trash can with a secure lid to protect your pets.

What do you do to keep pets away from holiday decor and other seasonal risks? We’d love to learn your tips and tricks so we can all protect our furry family members this season!

The post How to Keep Pets Away from Holiday Decor & Other Hazards appeared first on Freshome.com.

Looking for ideas to make this Thanksgiving special? Edward Perotti is an event designer who has worked with artists like Ariana Grande and Nick Jonas. From intimate settings to spectacular events at the Louvre, the Palace of Versailles, the Basilica Cistern in Istanbul and the Great Wall of China, he knows a thing or two about producing extraordinary experiences. We asked him for some ideas to make this the best Thanksgiving ever.

“What comes to mind when you think of Thanksgiving?” Perotti asks. “Do you imagine a time of gratitude with your family, all the while counting your blessings? Or is it merely a day of eating, partying or watching sports on TV and showing your team spirit?”

Perotti grew up in San Francisco in a very traditional Italian-American home. Thanksgiving was a day for family and a celebration of togetherness.

“Over the years, I have seen and done many things to make this day special for my family and friends,” Perotti says. “Here are a couple of decor and tabletop ideas to make this year’s event one that your family will look back on with fond memories.”

Thankful Table

Perotti recommends creating a Thankful Table by first focusing on your dining table centerpiece:

• Take a potted Manzanita tree, wrap it in something simple like ivory or cream linen fabric and place it in the center of your table.
• Add various mason jars and glass milk bottles around the table, spray painted in a color to match your decor.
• Fill all but three jars with a single type of flower, like dahlias or hydrangeas.
• Label the three empty jars with FAMILY, HEALTH and GOOD FORTUNE. Mix the three labeled jars with the others jars, all building out from either side of the tree.
• As your guests arrive and get comfortable, have them take a slip of paper or index card to write down one or two things they are thankful for or consider a blessing this season.
• Before your meal, take the cards and tie them to the tree branches with ribbon. This has now become your family blessing tree and the centerpiece to your table decor.
• When you are ready for everyone to join the table, go around the table and have each person take a card off the tree and read it aloud.
• Once they read the card, they can place it in the appropriate blessing jar.
• When you’re done, you will have a fairly good view of your family’s strongest blessings. You’ll be amazed (and moved) when you hear how people truly feel.

Thankful Table

“People who know me personally know how much I love to mix china patterns,” Perotti says. “Since Thanksgiving is about bringing together people of all backgrounds, it’s a time to embrace this concept. You can start by designing a table inspired by and honoring the women in your family.”

• Start with a minimum of 40 mini orange and white pumpkins. Mix the colors to create a one-foot wide ‘table runner’ of the mini pumpkins. Strategically place 4 single candles within the pumpkin runner.
• Add florals in small and subtle varieties, like mini ivory hydrangeas. Disperse the flowers randomly within and on top of your pumpkin runner.
• For the actual place settings, ask your grandmother, mother, sister, aunt, mother-in-law, etc. if you can borrow some of their fine china and stemware. You will only need a handful of pieces from each.
• Set your table by using the salad plate from one set, the dinner plate from another set and so on with additional plates and glassware.
• Don’t worry about matching. This table is all about your family and the blending of different styles to create one overall experience.
• For dessert, gather a bunch of digital pictures from all your family members and create a photo collage of the pictures. Print enough 5×7 prints of the collage so that you have one for each guest, and insert the prints into frameless glass picture frames. These frames are your dessert plates.

Family stories

“When everyone gathers around the table, have each person who donated china tell a favorite family memory, perhaps about why they chose the china that was used that evening,” Perotti says. “A story I loved hearing is about how my grandfather proposed to my grandmother.”

If you want to save this Thanksgiving memory, he recommends recording everyone sharing their memories with your phone so you can save it for future generations. “This is a great way to always remember your family story and journey.”

Happy Thanksgiving from the Freshome team!

The post Ways to Make This Thanksgiving One Your Family Will Cherish Forever appeared first on Freshome.com.