Pinning!

(said in a way reminiscent of Charlie Sheen's infamous "winning" comment...)

Hi, my name is Laura and I am addicted to Pinterest.

What is it about that site that makes it feel like I can accomplish absolutely anything in the kitchen, decorate my house to look like Pottery Barn, dress like a supermodel...and be as fit as one, too?!

Well, when I saw these while perusing Pinterest one day, I knew I had to make them. You see, my sweet parents gave us some beautiful, large, red pots for the porch and trees to go in them for our anniversary, which is in June. Well, come August and those gorgeous firs were dead. No beating around the bush (ha! pun actually not intended), completely brown, pine needles falling all over the porch, dead. These were not the first plants I had killed, mind you. I am still working on my green thumb, to say the least. So when I saw a tree that looked amazing and would NEVER die, I was sold! A forever tree, as we call them!

Here is what I did:
I took myself down to the Home Depot to buy 2 tomato cages which are only a couple of dollars each. Make sure to get the galvanized steel variety and to measure your pot first to make sure it is a good fit.

I then went to Michael's (any craft store would work...personally, I am a fan of the Hob Lob) and bought extra glue sticks for my glue gun, green wire (found in the floral department) and a lot of plain, unlit garland. I chose to go with unlit to make it look more realistic and so I had the option to add lights if I wanted. I like to be in control here. Just when you think you have bought enough 9 ft. strands of garland, add 10 more to your cart. This takes a LOT of garland. I ended up using 8 on one tree and 9 on the other...no idea how that worked out like that.

Now for the fun part. I did this on the porch because the garland tends to shed a little while you are working with it so it was a much easier clean up. Grab your hot glue gun and some good tunes because you will be there a while.

First, flip your tomato cage upside down and use the green wire to wrap the open part of the cage closed.

Next, take one end of your garland and hot glue it to the top, over the wire. Now you just start wrapping and gluing...and repeat 392 times. I found it was helpful to straighten my garland out, put hot glue on the steel frame and then push the garland on and hold for a few seconds while drying.

This is such a forgiving project. Because the garland has wire "branches" that come off of it, you can glue the entire strand of garland on and then fluff it out to look more realistic. Keep gluing the garland onto the steel frame and once you reach the end of the garland strand, there is a little hook that I reached up from the inside to hook around part of the frame and glue to the branch above. You do not need to go to the very bottom of the tomato cage- if you don't keep the cage in the pot while you are working on it, I recommend you mark where the top of the pot meets the cage to stop there.

Half way through:

This project does take about 2 hours per tree...so it is very time consuming but guess what- your tree will never die! And, to me, that is worth every minute.

(Pardon the garland wrappers...and the one strand of garland missing on the right...I was just so excited to view my handiwork!)

A recommendation would be to weigh it down from the inside because on windy days, I have found one of the trees in the neighbors yard! At Home Depot they sell screws that work in dirt or even hot glue the bottom rim of the cage to your pot.

And there you have it- forever trees!

Y'all come back,
Laura