Friday, December 19, 2014

Christmas Hanging Baskets

Merry Christmas, folks! I'm sure that many of you are already completely prepared for the holiday. Your house is fully decked out, your tree is trimmed, your gifts wrapped, and your menu planned. Hats off to you. For us normals over here, we're still be scrambling to get everything ready before C-Day. My tree is up, but not decorated. My house has lights...on most of it. And the presents are....well, let's just not talk about it.

One thing that always bugs me in that fall-to-winter transition period is how sad and lonely my front porch looks when my hanging baskets go away. They leave a big gaping hole and there's nothing left to draw attention away from the ugliness of my door and windows. So depressing. So in the interest of filling that void and giving you a very easy DIY Christmas decoration idea, here's my genius, revolutionary, life-altering idea: CHRISTMAS hanging baskets. Right???? (Okay, maybe not LIFE-ALTERING, but they look pretty and festive and they make me happy, so take your judgments elsewhere. Grinch.)

A few cheap items make this really easy to pull together:
1. Wrought-iron hanging basket
2. Wide burlap (12 inch is best)
3. Pine cones (I couldn't find enough, so I got one of those cinnamony bags of them they sell at Michaels)
4. Christmas balls (non-breakable...learned the hard way)
5. Battery-operated Christmas lights

Loosely wrap and bunch the burlap all around the inside of the basket until it is fully lined. You will have to play with it and tug it through the other side a little bit until you get it the way you want it. As long as it looks good on the outside, that's what matters. It can be a big old mess inside; you're just going to fill it with stuff.

Fill the basket with pine cones and Christmas ornaments or whatever you want to fill it with. I like shiny red Christmas balls because I feel they're the easiest to see, but obviously, creative license and so forth.

Weave a strand of battery-operated Christmas lights around the basket, in and out of the wrought iron, and tuck the battery pack into the burlap so that it's hidden, but you obviously still want to be able to reach it to turn it on and off. **NOTE: Make sure the battery pack is okay for OUTDOOR use. Also learned that the hard way. :(

That's it! Here's a picture of how mine turned out:

This picture and the tutorial are actually from last year. I didn't have a blog then, so I just threw it on Pinterest as a user-upload, but figured this year, I should do right by these baskets. Pretty, isn't it?

Please let me know how your baskets turn out, and if you have any fun tweaks!

Happy Holidays!!!