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 The Christmas Decorations Ideas of decking our halls with evergreen Christmas Floral Designs at Christmastime is as old as our plea-A sure at seeing green growing things amid the winter's snow. In the days before the mass production of Miscellaneous Holiday Ornaments, tinsel, and paper chains changed our habits entirely, conifer boughs and branches of holly, ivy, and mistletoe used to festoon all the rooms where guests would be welcomed and children would compete for the honor of crowning each picture on the parlor wall with its spray of Christmas Floral Designs evergreen.
Alongside all the manmade decorations, however, fresh, natural elements have been making a steady comeback. Now we are using more kinds of greenery than ever, and re-learning, too, the old skills of cutting and drying summer flowers and fall berries to delight us afresh with their subtle colors and graceful shapes. City florists and Craft stores stock a whole host of dry foliage for their Christmas Floral Designs. On the weekends take a drive in the country and you will find free beauty along the roadside. Look for dried grasses, seed pods, sticks, drift wood, mosses, vines or fall leaves. You will also find many nice leaves lurking in our very own backyards and used as Yard Garden Decor.
Use your newly found native greenery, dried flowers and berries for Victorian greenery Christmas Floral Designs. There are also many natural plants that can be harvested for making vine Decorative Christmas Wreaths, baskets, Christmas Tree Stands, and decorative swags. The result is a Christmas that sparkles with the unpretentious beauty of nature. For the holidays use Colorado blue spruce branches or white pine branches that hold up better than anything else. Both of these plants make a jubilant holiday decoration that re-quires minimal attention.
The following are hints and pointers about natural greenery:
Natural plants have a problem with indoor heat. A humidifier is the easiest way to keep things from falling apart as far as external drying goes. Even if you have baseboard heat, you should put a tub of water down so there's steam coming up and a little humidity.
To see if the greenery is fresh shake the damn thing! Basically, it's just like spaghetti. Before it's cooked, spaghetti will break, but when it has moisture in it it's nice and al dente. If the Christmas Floral Designs greenery is old or tired, look for dropage.
Sphagnum moss can be used for securing your natural plant arrangements. It works better than floral foams, Oasis, and things like that. Oasis breaks up, whereas you can pack sphagnum moss as tight as you want and it will breathe and come back again. Once you've broken up Oasis it's gone. However, if you are making a Home Decor Gifts vase arrangement, Oasis is the easiest thing to get.
When making a wreath mount it on a stable surface and buy a wire wreath frame. You can also use vines that keep their body and shape. Use honeysuckle, snake vines, Virginia creeper, porcelain vines, red huckleberry, and dogwood branches. For greenery, white pine is very good; and so is spruce in terms of using the least amount of branches, because it's wide. I don't recommend balsam at all because it falls apart on you.
Christmas swags are easy to make by simply tying three or four branches together with wire. Swags should come out like a fan. I recommend using 20 to 23 gauge florist's wire. Anything finer than that breaks; the lower you go, the heavier your wire. If you stick some holly or red alder twigs in, it's really very pretty. The more interesting evergreens can be simple, yet still just as effective and dramatic.
For a more aromatic arrangement try native juniper, which is red cedar, smells wonderful. It doesn't drip sap, has short needles, and even when it dries out it doesn't drop. Bayberry is really nice. Its spicy, fragrant branches blend well with evergreens.
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