Christmas is coming!

 There's nothing like a load of greenery and a bit of sparkle in a wreath on your front door to start off the Christmas feeling and our dose was larger than normal this year as we at Daisy held our first wreath making party.

We invited ten lovely ladies with varying experience of wreath making to test our ability to host and guide them to the successful creation of wreaths for their front doors.

(The words guinea pig comes to mind - poor souls!)

Preparation began in the garden, pruning and cutting back, choosing as wide a variety of greenery leaf size, texture and colours. There's not much left in my garden now, but then there was far too much in my garden to start with!!

 Ivy - flowers and tendrils, Rosemary for fragrance and Euonymus for variegation.

I never realised I had four types of Euonymus - all different shades, and with dried Hydrangea heads and Hypericum berries, bits of Fir, Bay and Laurel, all were bucketed up and transported.

Joined by reddish leaves of Trachelospermum, the silvery leaves of Sage, and some pale, pale Choisia, we added some fake frosty berries in red and white, baubles and sprayed Hydrangeas (we sprayed them silver, white and gold and the ones that worked best were the ones that weren't too well sprayed!) we were almost sorted for wreath contents...

apart from the Roses.

Then we set up the work space...

(with a fantastic view over Truro)

We provided everyone with an oasis ring mounted on a plastic base, which we bound with florist tape for stability. We provided florist wire and wirecutters and asked all our lovely ladies to bring secateurs and a bit of their own greenery...

and we printed out some of the lovely pictures from our Pinterest board as inspiration.

 With mulled wine (which had to be tested!), spiced apple juice and some mince pies and we were ready to go!

As our guests arrived the festive chatter began...

 and after a brief introduction and demonstration from Jayne we were off!

There was leafy pandemonium...

and much industrious snipping and arranging...

and mutual assistance... 

to achieve a table full of fantastic results!

Here is a selection of finished wreaths...

the only reason I haven't shared all of them is that my photography of some of them was very shaky!

They were all fantastic and so different.

Justine was first to finish and be awarded her mulled wine and mince pie, She also managed to get her wreath, which she did as a table centre, home on a bicycle unscathed!

Then all there was left to do was tidying up and the first Daisy event was over!

It was all a huge success and so lovely to see everyone leave with their wreaths, happy with their efforts. It felt so good to have had some small part in their creation (although we will be taking all the credit for each and every one of your wreaths from now on).

Thank you so much ladies, we couldn't have wished for better guinea pigs and your support and encouragement mean so much to the Daisy duo.

We also managed to raise almost £100 for the Aleppo appeal so thank you for that too.

Next year we hope to do it all again, but we'll need a bigger table so you don't end up pulling bits out of each others wreaths again!