I love the look and smell of REAL garlands at Christmas time. The problem is, the ones you can buy live or fake aren’t bushy enough for me (unless you’re willing to drop some serious coin on them. Did that sound gangsta? I was hoping it sounded gangsta), and making one out of all live plants is time consuming. I don’t like projects that take more than fifteen minutes and crap I have on hand, so I never do them.

just fake garland

This year was freaking GENIUS though, if I don’t say so myself. I bought your basic $10 fake lighted garland from Home Depot. Looked good enough on it’s own, but I wanted it to be bushy and alive and Pottery Barn like.

So I went out with my scissors (because having any sort of gardening implements is just beyond me, and I’m no longer allowed near chainsaws) and cut off branches from my boxwood bushes in my front yard. Yeah. Right there. Just waiting to be crafted with. And you don’t have to have boxwoods (and I had to look up what kind of bush it was…I had no idea) in your yard, anything that is still green now will probably work. Go look at Pottery Barn. Their pricey mantle decor is all fresh stuff. Just copy them. It’s all I do. 

Then I came in, took the branches and JABBED them into the garland. If they didn’t want to stay, I’d take one of the little fake branches from the garland (that are wired) and wrap it around. I did this with the garland already on my mantle, so I could work from the middle out, but I don’t even think that matters.

It wasn’t bright enough for me (it never is) so I took another strand of white lights that was half burned out  and laid it on top of the garland and then kind of worked it around the branches.

From there, Peyton and I added ornaments. We got a really pretty cheap set from Walmart that had some that were glittered and some that were brown. Sparkly and rustic all at once.

I found when adding ornaments, and someone with real crafting experience feel free to correct me if I’m wrong (and if you are brave), bundling them in groups of two or three just looks better. I also didn’t hang them from the branches, I wired them in deep so they looked more apart of the garland. I used the little silver hooks you use on any ornaments to wire them in.

Anyways, super easy. Took me about 30 minutes total, including cutting the branches (which I really didn’t even have to do, they broke off pretty easily and breaking them off was just a little cathartic).

For the life of me I can’t get the stockings to hang the right way. Maybe that will be a post for another day. Probably not though.

I upload pictures of all of these projects as I do them to my instagram account. In fact, most of the crap on this blog is in condensed form on Instagram. Feel free to follow me there. I’m @mostlytruestuff