Natural decorations

For years I've been making decorations predominantly out of natural materials trying to get away from all that tinsel and fake snow (come on, I live in the southern hemisphere and this aspect alone has made me realise from an early age just how commercial and fake it all seems). Since we have our Christmas/Solstice in summer it has meant that my decorations gathered from nature are generally summer-based too.

Over the years I have made felted balls which I've beaded and I've collected pieces of nice driftwood from the beach and embelished them.

So it was timely that I was reading over at Happy and Free and came across a star that Stephanie had made. I liked this idea and gathered up some twigs from our kindling pile, found a bit of lichen moss in the back of my car that I had found a few months back, and a bunch of flowers from our garden (violets, lavender and some sort of weed flower). I made the star by using rubber bands to hold them together and then covered them with some hemp twine. I'm quite pleased with it, although don't think the flowers will last paticularly well, so may need to redecorate it over the next month.

The kids also brought the basket of pine cones in from the front door and put some glue into the spaces and sprinkled glitter in. I came across a similar idea here which inspired me. So these can be placed around the tree.

We plan to give some painted and glittered ones a go with some little seed pod things we collected today while out on a walk.