Deck the Halls

I’ve been wanting to get creative for Christmas for as long as I can remember but somehow everything else takes priority in December and another Christmas flies by! Not so this year! Armed with my trusty secateurs, I prowled the garden foraging for evergreens to chop and ended up with so much foliage that my kitchen looked like the back end of a florist’s workshop!

Like all things in life which we put off, it was much easier to get creative once I had actually started, and it was so much fun! I started with the light above the dining table…

Armed with two rectangular blocks of floral foam, I soaked them, let them dry out a good bit and then taped them to the outside of the light with florist’s tape – note to self, be careful with water near electricity! And then the fun began of choosing chopped boughs from my fir trees to jam into the floral foam. You can be as creative as you like and have evergreens coming out at any angle that speaks to your taste. I then added a few baubles, pine cones and a set of battery operated lights and voila, I absolutely love it!

In fact, I loved it so much and had so many boughs of fir tree left on my breakfast bar, that I decided to make another masterpiece and stuck two more blocks of floral foam on the pelmet in the downstairs toilet!

Once you get started, it’s a bit addictive so there I was, back in the garden, chopping at other bits of evergreen foliage! Another block of floral foam cut into a smaller piece and shaped to be a little more circular in shape and I was off again making a table display. You’ll need a small pot, bowl or even a paper coffee cup cut in half to hold the floral foam so you can add water as this table display will need watering every few days to keep it looking fresh. The cut fir tree branches will survive a lot longer without watering and as one of mine is above a light, I won’t be watering it at all! 

Just work around the circle adding foliage into the floral foam from the bottom and work upwards until you have a beautiful centrepiece for the middle of your Christmas table. Not only will it look fabulous, you’ll be able to bask in the glory of having made it yourself and all for the price of a bit of floral foam!