Tomorrow is finally the first day of December, which means I can gleefully bust out all of my Christmas decor, music, cookie cutters and giant red and green bows! For the first two years of my relationship with my now fiancé, we were in love with getting a fresh cut tree from the church down the road. I have the best memories of our first Christmas together and picking out our tree. At the time, I was living in a cramped one bedroom on a tiny salary that could barely afford Christmas lights, let alone a tree. We waited and waited, trying to decide if we wanted to splurge and buy that gorgeous plush evergreen we had our eyes on each time we drove by the church that sold them.
About a week before Christmas, we drove by the tree lot again, looked at each other, took a deep breath and said "are we really doing this?". Yep - we bought one...not just a little tree either. We brought home a biggin'! At 7 feet tall, we barely fit it into the apartment. We chuckled like children carrying the monstrous fir through the hallways, looking at each other and laughing out loud every time a neighbor gave us a look...we knew what they were thinking; 'how in the world is that going to fit into one of these apartments.'
We wiggled and shoved it through the door and left a trail of pine needles behind. We had our first tree for our first Christmas together and we wanted to do it right. All we could afford for the tree were a few lights Target had already discounted because no one seems to buy lights the week before Christmas. Once we finally got the lights on it, we sat on our lumpy sofa and just stared. That tree was our gift to each other that year - and a gift I'll never forget.
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My love for fresh greenery has since been evident in all my holiday decorating - from magnolia garlands to orchid arrangements and the like, I love making my own holiday decor from nature all around me.
This year, I wanted to go for a more traditional look for the holidays and make a boxwood wreath. I love their simple elegance. It just so happened the boxwoods in our yard needed pruning too, so really it was a win-win. This wreath took me about 30 minutes to construct and around $10 dollars to make including the wreath form and fairy lights. The bow I used is one I have had for a few years now.
I began by cutting a foot-long piece of wire, bending it in half and poking the wire through a hole in the wreath form. This first piece will be what you use to hang the wreath by. The way I made this is pictured in the next few photos below.
Now we have our wreath hanger. Don't worry about it looking pretty, the bow will cover it up.
Next, take a handful of trimmings and bunch them together at the bottom. For each bundle, I used about 1 1/2 - 2 ft of florists wire to tightly bind them together and laced the remaining foot through the wreath form hole, and then around the form to make sure it was on good and tight.
Begin working your way around the form until each hole has been looped with a bundle of boxwood trimmings.
Once this step is complete, your wreath should look something like this...not what you expected right? Don't worry, we aren't done yet!
Take your additional trimmings and lay them on top of the empty patches. Here's where our wreath will begin to take it's form.
Grab the section, and with a 1 1/2 - 2 ft wire begin to criss-cross the wire from front to back to adhere all of the sprays of boxwood trimmings to the form.
Go around your wreath repeating this step until it is complete.
Your finished wreath should look like this!
Once I was finished, I tied my bow around the top and draped the tales off to one side so that the wreath wasn't fully covered up. I laced my lights around the wreath and hid the battery pack behind the bow.
And there you have it folks! A quick and easy tutorial for a sophisticated and natural boxwood wreath.
If you liked this tutorial, let me know in the comments section!
