I have no dining room. :(

lavender, there's a good thread on this very topic on the Home Decorating forum. At the moment it is still on page one and the title begins with Thanksgiving Tables.

I'm diningroom-less also! Instead we have a large eat in farmhousey style kitchen.

And as for decorating...I'm not holding out much hope for a beautifully decorated home this year..... our 6 month old kitten seems to have his own plan...............

jiggreen - lol.

My dining room consists of an old wooden kitchen table on casters that I keep in the big bedroom. When I have people over for a meal or need a workspace for decorating cookies, I wheel it out into the livingroom. But I do transfer dishes from the library onto the table in the bedroom when I decorate the library for Christmas. That counts, I guess. :)

jiggreen--our kitty used to climb our tree too--fake trees have those perfectly placed sturdy limbs that are soooooo inviting to fuzzy little climbers. What I do is wrap aluminum foil around the interior of each branch, near the trunk. She hates the sound and feel of the foil, and won't climb it anymore (but she tries every year, finds the foil, and scolds me, lol) You can't see the foil, really, once the decorations are on, but it does reflect some of the light back out which is nice.

Lavender lass-- unfortunately, all we have in our dining room is a carpet; we couldn't afford a table after all the other work we did to move into our new old house. Maybe next year :-) I hope someone has pics to post for you; I'd love to see them too.

Another good way to keep kitty from climb is to use a squirt bottle of water. The kitty gets near the tree and gets squirted. Works well on cats since most don't like water.

Omgosh, when I first saw this topic, I thought "dining room? Other people really have those?". (I thought they were mythical in old houses - like unicorns, lol!). Turns out I'm not alone, I guess. :-)

We have a counter with raised eat-at bar separating kitchen from living room, and the kitchen table in the living room (of all places), for sit down meals & homeschooling. In this house I have to throw convention out the window & be creative, kinda like the "multi-purpose" rooms in grade school. ;-). The decorating isn't done (ok, started), yet, but I'll get some pics on when it's ready. (Hopefully before new years).

Jiggreen - your kitten looks just like our "Sunday", complete with the tree! She was about that age last year & did the same thing - except I gotta tell you it was worse when she & her brother ("Saturday") were chasing each OTHER all around inside & UP that thing! DH had to custom build a stand for it so we didn't have to pick the tree back up every morning!
I'll absolutely be trying the aluminum idea - thanks Tricia! :-)

Lol, Carol... May want to unplug the lights first! (Ntl Lampoons Christmas Vacation cat came to mind for a second, there). Yikes! :-)

Okay ll here are a few of mine:

Just have the tree up so far.