Maybe it’s the drama and tiresome happenings in the daily news that is causing everyone to need an escape. Looking around my small town yesterday, it seems that everyone is getting geared up for the holidays extra early this year. I even saw a couple of homes with outdoor holiday lights brightly blazing.
While my halls are not yet decked (it is still a week until Thanksgiving after all) I too am feeling especially anxious for the festivities to begin. This year I am feeling rather traditional and particularly fruity!
Drawn to Pinterest photos of traditional red and green decor and finding the simplicity of Williamsburg style especially appealing, I decided I would recycle an old wreath into pine and fruit-laden door décor. I thought about it for days. An old wreath hung in the basement, unused, for a number of years. Already wired with apples and pine cones, I knew I could dress it up further and make it beautiful again. With a couple of spare hours and excited to begin, I went to the basement storage room only to find that — “Egads! It was gone!” I began to have a vague recollection of donating the old wreath to a local thrift shop last spring.
Never one to let a set back stand in my way, I reached for my newer artificial pine wreath. Dressing my front door for the last few years with its large red and green baubles and glittering doodads, I was growing tired of it anyway. I carried It into the studio and, without a second thought, stripped it of all its decoration.
With a pine green base ready to embellish, I headed back to the storage room to grab a long-stored box of plastic fruits.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I mumbled.
The fruit box too, was gone. In the fury of last spring’s cleaning and with my reluctance to become a pack rat, I had also donated my box of realistic plastic fruits!
“Now what do I do?”
With my front door wreath now destroyed, its red and green baubles piled into a shiny heap on the the studio floor, I needed to make a new wreath. Yes, there are plenty of items in my craft supplies that would make a nice holiday wreath. I could have reused and recycled. But sometimes we get an idea in our heads and nothing else will do. This was one of those times. I had my heart set on a fruit- laden Williamsburg style front door. That would mean a trip to the craft store.
I still had some shiny red apples, red berries and extra greenery picks in my christmas stash. I purchased a half dozen pieces of yellow pears, bright orange tangerines and green apples. Like the colonists in Williamsburg, I would have preferred to dress my wreath with fresh fruits from the market. I love natural décor. But living at the edge of the woods as I do, hanging fresh fruit on my front door would only serve as a smorgasbord for the local deer!
Now, a few days later, my wreath is finished. Dressed with new fruits, collected pine cones, unshelled nuts, and other finds, it is ready to greet our Thanksgiving day guests. Now, to decide what comes next…
Happy (almost!) holidays!
Home at the WhackyShack 