Making natural Christmas decorations & ALL that it involves :)

bonjour everyone here it is my video amongst the gazillions of videos about creating homemade Christmas decor with foraged foliage actually this is my very first year that I am doing this since we moved here because I always felt I didn't have time plus I have to be completely honest there are so many beautiful accounts that I follow on Instagram and they are all creating these beautiful Christmas wreaths and decorations I'm kind of impressed by that and it makes me a little insecure about whether I can pull it off as well but I really want to do this so I'm just giving it a shot I am starting with the easy part which is making the base for my wreath so in the last video you've seen me prune our vines so I have a lot of long twigs and branches that I can use for this because what I know is that you can't just bend them they need to be completely soaked and wet so that they don't break when you bend them now these are actually my Virginia creeper vines that I also pruned and since they were very wet still I decided to use these because it's just easier I can work with these straight away without needing to soak them so I am using one of Olav's container things he always laughs because whenever I do gardening and I feel I need to have like a bucket or something to put everything in I always grab one of his and he's always so annoyed with it why don't you just buy a bucket of your own and use that so I'm using one of his again as you can see and this actually helps me create a round shape the beginning is a little difficult because I was kind of looking how am I going to make sure it sticks together but after a while as you have more branches that you're wrapping you find more places where you can stick the ends in and at the very end when this is done I'm going to take one of the really long branches and just wrap them all around so it's going to hold everything together now of course I couldn't have done this without the incredibly valuable help of my assistant Tigrette she was both my moral support and as you can see a great help [Music] [Music] now the base is all done it needs to dry for a couple of days so I can go out and start forging for actual greenery and things that I can put on the wreath in a couple of days when I will continue with this project first I want to do something else I want to start making a candlestick holder, I don't know what this is called and I'm looking for this specific planter that I know we have somewhere and I'm looking everywhere I can't find it meanwhile Olav is cutting this branch of our lilac that got destroyed during recent storm so I go hey babe I can't find this planter and he says oh that's in the greenhouse you planted basil in there this summer I'm like oh yeah I did and this shows you exactly how easily distracted I am because I'm on my way to the greenhouse and I spot these beautiful dried flowers that I need to pick now and put with my dried stems collection for whatever next project okay so back to the planter what I plan to do is to make a planter with moss and then stick four candles in it welcome to the tomato jungle but there's actually still tomatoes in here we never come in here anymore but we can still harvest and eat these because they're really good see there's a few back there still and some green ones here but they're getting too soft now we should have paid more attention here's the last of the basil that I never harvested but I was looking for this pot if anyone is worried about the fire hazard I actually ordered candle holders that I stuck in here later I was just waiting for them to come in so they are now actually in candle holders that are high enough so there is no fire hazard don't worry I'm okay my family is okay I parked my car in the mud here somewhere because while I was driving on the big road I saw this little wood that they're using like the woods behind our house for firewood and I saw at the end of it it looked like they had many spruce trees which we hardly have in this area see but I don't see any lower branches that I can use these must have fallen down during the storm there's plenty on the ground here that I think I'll just use that then it doesn't feel like I'm stealing or doing something I'm not supposed to be doing oh boy that one's big all right find the path and back to the car oh it's heavy gosh I honestly thought I parked way closer than I did there we go this is why I don't have a fancy car I do these kind of things all the time would love to have one of those Jeeps I'm in another spot where I know there is some pine trees here to the right I'm not sure if this is a private property I do know a couple of farmers that farm up here in these fields these have definitely been planted but as I drive on that big road there I see there is just natural ones behind here really really big ones though these that are very different they look more like the Provence pine trees to me we have a couple of these around the vineyards but I meant the ones in the back there they don't look like anybody is using those what do you think let's go up there so one lesson about moving to the countryside whatever you're doing in your day wear boots because you'll always end up in a farm field somewhere for some reason these look very christmassy I should have brought my bigger one I have it in the car let just pick a few and see what we can do with these so here's a last spot look this tree fell down and it's full of ivy and what I like about ivy this time of year is that it has these beautiful flower like things so and it's easy to bend it's just here going to waste see there is mistletoe that is something that we don't have in the Netherlands where I'm from originally there's just a very small part of the Netherlands where you can find that in the very south but where I grew up we didn't have it and the rest of the Netherlands doesn't have it either but mistletoe is all around our property as well so I'll get the mistletoe from where I live look that looks like a kind of like a spruce kind of tree back there see if we can walk that way oh look it's a conifer I think and this is where the tennis court is so that's probably private property I might just get a little bit from the back here see where I can go down without going flat on my face so this is probably going to sound pretty ridiculous to you but honestly I had no idea how one makes a Christmas wreath I was just thinking how am I going to stick the branches in how am I going to use that wire so I turned again to Skillshare I have talked about them in a previous video I find it such a valuable source for learning and they are also the sponsor of today's video which I am very grateful for so Skillshare is the largest online learning community for creatives they have thousands of classes and they're all led by industry experts on all sorts of different topics ranging from more personal development kind of classes such as productivity or raising your confidence more businesslike marketing and publishing writing all that kind of classes but also a large number and that's the ones I'm most interested in to be honest is the more crafts and arts and DIY gardening keeping your plants alive making beautiful flower arrangements this particular class about arranging a stunning centerpiece blew my mind I am definitely going back to this one in the spring when I can pick all the wild flowers so yes I turned to the home and lifestyle section to a class on literally making a Christmas wreath I was so happy with the very hands-on very practical examples that she gave just showing how it's done and also layering the different types of greeneries so this was so helpful and it's also given me some confidence that I might actually be able to turn this wreath into something that looks nice so if you feel you want to explore your creativity in the coming months please know that the first 500 people to use my link in the description will receive a one month free trial of Skillshare then I also wanted to try to make wreath just using this ivy now I know many of you are going to want to comment to say I need to put my hair up I actually only put my hair up when I'm cooking for guests but I really don't like having my hair up I don't know why I get these comments all the time let me just tell you this I have skin cancer spots in my face that I need to have removed regularly I love to keep my hair down I can see perfectly I know it doesn't look like that on video but I can see perfectly from my perspective and having all this hair hang in front of my face actually protects me from the sun so now you know if you've always wondered or have always been bothered by it this was actually a lot harder to make I was thinking oh this is easy this is easy to bend but when I put it up I saw it was completely out of balance so this needed a little more time but I'm overall really happy with the result so let me show you I made these two now I also put some greenery up on the kitchen shelving I will be doing more Christmas decorations we also still need to put our tree up but this will do for now I am really happy with the result thank you so much for watching and I will see you again next week