Feeling festive

A festive aside from allotmentry today…

In the last few weeks I’ve been plundering the local countryside for Christmas decorations. On the mantlepiece I’ve stuck a vase of stems with seedheads found in a field margin. I peppered on some gold spray and added a pheasant feather (of which there are a lot around here!) for a rustic centrepiece.

Sprayed stems and pheasant feather

And I’m super-chuffed with the wreath I made for the front door. I used off-cut branches from our Christmas tree, variegated holly branches found in our community compost heap (!) and some spare small red baubles.

But my best find were scattered on the ground in a recently-harvested conifer wood: Twigs dotted with rows of lovely pine cones, each about the size of a hen’s egg.

Like the seedheads, I gave the pine cones some gold highlights, and used thin green wire to stitch everything together.

I didn’t use a template or support, so it was difficult to make it sturdy and nicely round – but careful choice of which section to hang it from seems to have evened it out! Perhaps after a couple of weeks it’ll be a bit saggy, but hey ho, right now it looks ace.

Homemade wreath