6.21.2013

summer flowers! - repost for Midsommar!


I am re-posting this blog today for MIDSOMMAR! This is a great idea for today you can make flower wreathes for your house or your kids! It's a super fun thing to do together with your kids and what a perfect day for it! Swedish Midsommar!

Beautiful weather finally made it our way yesterday... so right then and there, I planted my garden, flowers and vegetables, and since we were going to go to a Memorial Day cookout I decided we would make these crowns! (forgive me but I totally forgot to photograph the crowns on the kids!!). For the kids we wound them with a bit more branches so that they were more durable and put lots of flowers in them! They loved to wear them and it was really fun for them to collect the flowers.


I think that this is a great way to decorate your house for a summer party. These don't last very long (unless you have some type of solution that we have not come up with!) but if you make them just before people come over they will surely last for an evening (or at least when everyone comes IN your house!). This is a typical Swedish decoration that Swede's love to do for Midsummer (coming up here in June!). But since we had such nice flowers for the crowns and wreathes, I decided it was a good time to make them now (and besides, while I was doing yard work I noticed that the birch tree needed trimming!).


So here is the HOW: Start with a few birch branches, they are nice and soft and pliable. I think that anyone can figure it out if you try, just wind them into a circle and wind them around each other! keep winding new branches (it works best if you keep it going in the same direction). I used some dogwood branches we had for flowers and some broom bush (what is the 'real' name for those?), but you can use daisy's, buttercups or any flowers you may have growing wild around.

Most of all have fun and wear them to parties, put them all over your house... whatever! and come Midsummer you can make a Maypole and hang them it! (by then you should be good at it!).