Harvesting Decorations from Our Land

 

Mara with a basket of boughs.

 One of the benefits of having a little bit of land is quite likely having some trees and some wild areas where things grow naturally. We don't have a large amount of that sort of area on our property of just over 1 acre, but we do have some. When we want to decorate for some season or another our first impulse is generally to head outside and see what natural decorations that we can find.

  Our family loves the outdoors and when we can pull a bit of it inside to enjoy we like that quite a bit too. So on Saturday with temps around -15 degrees F, Mara and I dressed up warmly and headed out for a walk around the property.

Me and my log

In our woods we have a big clump of birch trees and some of them had died and fallen down so we collected some logs from back there. We also trimmed little bits here and there from our various evergreen trees and shrubs. I grabbed a log from our woodpile (which we had cut up from fallen trees and have to burn in our fire pit) for use inside. We also found quite a few branches to use and I picked some of the red berries from the Lilies of the Valley but they ended up getting mushy upon coming inside so we didn't use them. We also found a few pine cones to add to are already big pine cone collection that had been gathered other years.

 This was the mess that resulted in our entry way. But gradually that mess has disappeared and I think the house is beginning to look rather nice. I actually hope to go on another bough picking expedition soon.

 All of the kids got involved in the decorating. It is fun to work together though I admit that sometimes I struggle with enjoying all their wild excitement over decorating when I have my own ideas of how I would like it done. This year I thought it would be fun to try to have a Scandinavian look as much as possible.

Here is one shelf that is done. We have been able to decorate our home for quite a few years without spending any money but simply using products from nature and other found objects and things we already have on hand.

   I am hoping to finish the decorating today and then I will post a tour - probably either tonight or tomorrow. So come on back if you would like to have a tour!

  How do you like to decorate?

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