a grove of trees

When my husband and I first married, we bought a house immediately. My husband was still in graduate school and we were saving for my maternity leave. Because we moved into our house at the end of November, we excitedly moved right into Christmas decorating. Sam and I rented a second floor apartment on Fabric Row in Philadelphia before house buying. We had a very little tree in the apartment with a minimum of ornaments. Suddenly, we had this seemingly huge house. (It seems quite small to us now.) And no decorations.

So, we were broke. (Did I mention that?) I actually think we moved to our house and didn't eat out for dinner for six months, because we were so afraid of spending money. I was really excited to decorate though, but I had to get creative. I was walking around Joann's trying to come up with something. I budgeted ten bucks or something. I do not sew, but something about seeing the Christmas fat quarters there for two bucks made me think--I can do something with those. I bought a few packs. I walked around the craft area and saw these styrofoam cones.

They looked like evergreens. I bought three in differing sizes, so they would look like a grove of trees. Then I took my fat quarters, and ripped strips from the fabric. All different green and red fabrics.

See, you need no sewing skills, or rather no skills at all for this project, except ripping and pinning. After I ripped the fabric, I took straight pins, and pinned the fabric into place. Funnily, my mother in law was visiting over Thanksgiving. I pulled them out with our Christmas decorations and she said, "What a clever way to use a thread spool." Or something possibly not thread. She is a weaver, so she thought I had glued the fabric on an old conical spool. You can! You can even glue these onto the styrofoam. They make styrofoam glue. I used pins, though, because that is what I had, and I like the sounds of pins going through styrofoam.

I pinned some red ribbon on top after I pinned all the fabrics. I really like the raw edges of the fabric when it is ripped. Believe it or not, I still have the fabric from those fat quarters. I made ornaments that first year too.

 

And that is it. Easy peasy, as Beezus says. I love them because we celebrate Winter Solstice, and having nature themed decorations is really important to us. And in context, they make a nice backdrop to our sideboard. Some really cheap decorations are on this sideboard too. For one, we cut a huge limb off our holly tree as a flower arrangement. I wrap the huge painting above the sideboard. It is just an easy, cheap decoration. And we use cuttings from our rope to line the nativity scene. We like to put greens everywhere. I also love displaying all the cards we get here.