Boxwood Tree Tutorial~How To Keep Real Green Clippings Fresh

Today is Day Number Three of the Holiday Housewalk tour of homes.  I was lucky enough to be included this year as the "surprise house" on Day One.  Click Here if you missed it.  I can't wait to see what today brings, day one and day two were just amazing.  You can take the entire tour from beginning to end at Jenniferrizzo.com

My tour included holiday decor in my Dining Room/Home Office.  I created a vignette on our buffet using a pair of trees decorated with real greens.  Today, I'm sharing the steps I took to create them along with my secret to keeping the green clippings fresh. 

Here is what I used to create my trees…

Two small faux trees ($7 each at the Family Dollar Discount Store),

 floral water picks and green twist ties from the craft store (Hobby Lobby),

and fresh boxwood clippings from my local nursery.

Here is how I did it…

The first step was to separate the boxwood branches and place a floral water pick filled with water on the end of each clipping.

I used about seven branches per tree, fourteen in all. 

Using the twist ties, I secured the boxwood clippings to the base of faux tree branches.

I made sure my clippings were evenly spaced before attaching them to the tree.  The nice thing about using a faux tree is that the wire branches allowed me to manipulate them until the tree is balanced.  

Once my clippings were secured to the trees, I placed them into a canvas storage tote lined with plastic grocery bags.  I lined them to protect against any possible drips from the floral picks.  

Since I was going with a nature theme, I decorated my little trees with white birds and snowflakes from the dollar store. I painted the birds' previously orange beaks black.

The floral vases can be refilled once the water is gone.  

I also used the vase trick to create a large scale, fragrant centerpiece out of fresh greens inside my deer vessel.  

In this project, I used a combination of evergreens, boxwood and faux greens. 

I found the large deer vessel at our Potterybarn Outlet last year.  He was just what my dining room table needed (I'm able to hide my office clutter behind his derriere during the day while I'm working).  

I admitted in my Better Homes and Gardens Christmas Ideas article to starting our holiday decorating quite early.  This trick allows me to extend the life of my fresh greens and possibly get away with only switching them out one more time before January.  

Thanks for stopping by.  Don't forget to hop on the Holiday Housewalk tour going on all week!

Click here for the full tour of my home along with product sources. 

For information on my affordable online design consultation service, click here. 

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