The first step is going to be to slice your citrus as thin as
possible. Once it's all sliced, put it in your dehydrator. I
prefer a dehydrator over the oven method, it just makes the
dehydrated fruit look better and cleaner. So, you'll
dehydrate your fruit. Just follow the directions on your
dehydrator. I usually do it for eight hours or even overnight.
When that fruit comes out of the dehydrator, it's going to
look beautiful. It almost has that stained glass quality to it that I just
love. So now we're ready to make our wreaths. I like to
start with eucalyptus. You can probably
find it at your farmers market later on in the season,
Septemberish. A lot of people grow it here in the Midwest and
all around, and it's a wonderful wonderful plant, and it
dries easy so you can use fresh or dried. I started using
embroidery hoops as my wreath base. So I just found these at
my thrift store. I grabbed different sizes so I can make
different size wreaths and it just makes it fun and I don't
know, just a different look. So, I'll start with my
eucalyptus. I just have two cut here and I took some leaves off.
And, I'm going to run some hot glue on my stems here. They're
going to look a little bit messy. And then, I'm just
going to place my stem and squeeze it right on to my hoop.
If your fingers aren't burnt from hot glue you're crafting
wrong. And then, on my next: a little bit more glue. And then,
I'm just going to squeeze that on, too. It's going to look messy,
but that's alright. It won't when we're done. And now, I'm
just going to use my dried citrus here. I'll put a little
glue on the back and press it right on to my wreath pushing
down to just make sure that it's sticking.
Another orange. Put that right down here. So, it's looking
pretty cute. Right? It's kind of cute. And then I'm just going to
add some bells so it will jingle along and be in the
holiday spirit. Now, you can add a bow to this too, if you'd
like. I'm not a great bow tier, so I don't.
Okay, so how cute are these? And you can really make it your
own by adding a few more decorations, even a nice big
red bow would look really good. I'm going to make a few more of
these wreaths to decorate the house with and then we're
going to get our number one decoration, which is the
Christmas tree. I'll see you over at the Christmas tree farm.
Thursday, December 19th on PBS Wisconsin.