Decorating for the holiday season always begins outdoors for us. The timing depends on the weather forecast and involves putting up the outdoor lights and gathering the boughs for the wreath. (The indoor boughs don’t come in until closer to Christmas to avoid a crinkly mess of dried greenery and loose needles.)

The gifts of the natural world are what I want to surround myself with during the holiday season. My go to favourites are poinsettias and green boughs from the woods. Add a few fairy lights and the house is almost decorated. We are fortunate here to have a nice selection of evergreens to use for decorating.

I use a metal frame for the wreath on the door. The inner channel is filled with hemlock boughs. Hemlock is the softest, most flexible green that grows in our woods. This  year the hemlock is full of small  cones which makes it especially pretty.

 

Once the inner channel of the metal frame is wired in with hemlock, I usually begin adding an assortment of other greenery.

I thought I would show you some of my choices to add to the hemlock to make a fuller wreath.

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I have lots of good options as you can see. But there is something I am just loving about the simplicity of the hemlock all by itself this year.