Garlands

When the boys returned from their hunting trip to Bedford yesterday, they not only brought a Christmas tree for the house, but also two scraggly white pine trees to use for decorations.  Well - there are a lot of branches on two trees, and it started to rain before I could use all of the greenery.  I did get the garland for the back porch done, by just using green wire to string branches together, and then wrapping a string of clear lights around the garland before hanging it.

Also made a small garland with all the left over short branches and used it for the archway into the back garden.  The arch itself has white wired clear lights on it, so it will look nice in the dark as well.

Other branches that were too short or too scraggly I just stuffed into tin buckets or into other containers which I then placed into outdoor flower pots.  (I do water these branches so they last longer - even outside)

Now that it is really raining, we are concentrating on the indoor decorations. This year, we used one of our "fabric" garlands around the mantel by the woodstove.  (fabric garlands are made by cutting homespun fabric into narrow strips, and then cutting each strip into 4 - 6 inch pieces.  These then get tied onto a string of Christmas lights) I used our cast-iron stocking holders to hold the garland in place.