From eye-appealing mantle displays and gorgeous wreaths to container arrangements and even natural decorations for your Christmas tree, bringing the outdoors in for the holidays makes decorating a fun adventure. Make this holiday season special by creating some of your own natural craft ornaments or by creating a holiday container arrangement to display near your front door.
For the best decorations, keep your eyes open and collect items year-round. But even if you're just starting in December, there's still time to make your holiday decorations special with a few natural touches.
Pinecones
Pinecones are about the easiest natural items to collect, especially in late fall and into the winter. Keep your eye out for various sizes and shapes, then tuck them into a mantel display or container arrangement. Or fasten a small hook or paper clip into the back of the cone, tie a small bow onto the hook and hang the cone on your tree. You can also create shimmery pinecones by spray painting them in silver or gold or sprinkling them with glitter or fake snow. Cluster several different sizes and types of cones together for variety, along with fresh evergreen branches.
Acorns
Gather different sizes, glue them together (you may want to spray them with a gloss sealant), add a bow and hang. Or consider stringing them along with other nuts you've collected, like black walnuts or hazelnuts, to create a garland.
Dried Flowers
Gather small bundles of dried flowers or grasses together and secure with floral tape or tie with raffia to create small nosegays to tuck into the boughs of your Christmas tree. Great choices are silver king Artemisia, white statice, sweet Annie, feathery dried grasses or goldenrod as backing or filler material. Dried rose buds, strawflowers, globe amaranth and others can be included for a splash of color. You can also glue dried flowers onto small Styrofoam balls to create colorful ornaments.
Seedpods and Seedheads
Collect seedpods from black-eyed Susan, coneflower, wild beebalm, Chinese lantern, prairie bushclover, Siberian iris, Penstemon, poppies, love-in-the-mist and milkweed, to name just a few, to tuck into your Christmas tree boughs or container arrangements. The seedheads of staghorn sumac offer a deep burgundy color that would make a beautiful accent in a holiday arrangement.
Osage orange (Hedge Apples)
Gathered in the fall, the green Osage orange balls can make unique ornaments with decorative seed patterns. Cut the large fruit into ½ inch thick slices, allow to dry in the oven and spray paint both sides gold. After they dry simply insert ornament hangers into the fruit and hang on the tree. Whole Osage oranges tucked into a wire egg basket can an old-fashioned feel to your home, too.
Holly, Bayberry, Coralberry or Rose Hips
Berries are a great way to add some color to your arrangement. Read this post for more information on two holly varieties that can be found in Nebraska.
Dried Fruit
Sliced, dried fruit make beautiful, fragrant holiday decorations. Take 1/8 inch thick slices of oranges, apples, pears, lemons and grapefruits, dip the slices into a mix of 1/2 lemon concentrate and 1/2 water and then lay the slices onto a cookie sheet lined with a brown paper bag. Leave in the oven at 175 degrees for at least two hours and then turn the fruit over and bake at least another hour. You can also stud oranges, kumquats, limes and lemons with cloves and arrange them in a bowl with bay leaves and lavender for another easy, fragrant way to add some holiday cheer to your home.
Redosier Dogwood (Cornus sericea).
The dogwood stems are green in the summer but change to a bright red once cold winter weather sets in. If you cut them in the summer, do not put them in water; store them dry, and they will last for months. Redosier dogwood makes a lovely addition to a container arrangement, offering a splash of bright color and nice height.
Corkscrew Willow (Salix matsudana)
Add some whimsey to your container arrangements with these varieties of corkscrew willow:
'Scarlet Curls' willow—scarlet red young stems in winter; the older stems are golden brown.
'Golden Curls' willow—golden yellow stems with a semi-drooping nature. Tends to develop a shrubbier form than Scarlet Curls.
Curly Willow 'Tortuosa'—gnarled and contorted gray-brown branches make a wonderful conversation piece and a great accent in the winter landscape.
Pussywillow (Salix discolor)
Dormant winter stems are dark purple-black with showy orange-red buds—a nice addition to a container display.
Also, don't forget about evergreen boughs. Ponderosa pine, Scotch pine and Eastern red cedar are commonly found in Nebraska, often in your own backyard. Clip swags for displaying on your mantle, adding to container displays or tucked into a centerpiece on the dining room table.
