A Do-It-Yourself Yule Garland

Fifth Day of Yule

Hello, Lovelies!

Today’s post is coming a tiny bit later than the last four days. I was exhausted last night after we finished cooking. Mama taught me how to cook the turkey last night, and that took a lot more out of me than I thought it would. But thanks to Savory Spice for coming through with the rubbed sage and the poultry seasoning, our dressing came out amazing without me having to add a crap ton of sage to the mix. Turns out, I think we’ve been using so much expired stuff here lately to make it that’s why we needed so much more sage than we normally.

But anyways, here we are. Another key piece to the decor that makes me happy because other than buying all the things to make it, I got to do this all on my own.

Figure Out What You Want to Use

The first step to any project is figuring out your materials. For me, mine was a bit of an ah-ha moment when I went into Joanns for some stuff back in November. I had only gone in for yarn, but ended up buying some of those cinnamon pine cones. Then the wheels started turning. I chose to include lemons and oranges in mine as well as pick up some small letters to spell out Yuletide on it as well.

For my garland, these are the items I used:

Gold & White Twine
Oranges
Lemons
Cinnamon pine cones
Wooden Letters
Pine Green Spray Paint
Clear Gloss Sealer

Dehydrating the Fruit

One of the biggest things you have to do with the fruit is to dehydrate it. Or you’re going to have issues. So you do have options:

If you have an air fryer and depending on the type of model, you can use the dehydrator setting and set it at 130°F/54.44°C. You’re going to let it bake like this for 4 hours.
If you are using a dehydrator, you’re going to set it at 130°F/54.44 °C and bake your fruit for 8 hours.
If you are using the oven, you have two ways to dehydrate the fruit there. Either way, you are going to set the oven at 200°F/93.33°C.
- Option One, you can line a baking sheet with parchment paper and lay your fruit evenly spaced on it to dry out. This will take much longer while the process is going. You will need to go in and flip every so often. I was flipping mine every 45 minutes to an hour when I switched to option two.
- Option Two, if you have cooling racks for cakes or cookies, you can settle them in or on baking sheets. I was able to fit my two square ones on one baking sheet and then a round one on another baking sheet. I lined mine up on all three and just let the oven do its thing. I will say it still took me three-ish days to finish dehydrating six lemons and six oranges.

Creating Your Garland

After you’ve gotten the fruit dehydrated, you’re going to need a tapestry needle. I used mine on the fruit and to help tie the string around my pine cones. However, the needle would not fit through the eye hooks I got for the letters, so I would have to take it off the needle to fit through those. However, it was helpful when handling the fruit and the pine cones. I also tied knots on all the things I hung. There was one pine cone I was able to put an eye in but that’s it. I may take another stab at this next year because it’s going to be a trial and error thing.

When measuring your twine out, I recommend having the area you want to hang it in already pinned to how you want it to look. Remember the stuff you hang on there can pull and make it heavier. Determine how far you want it all to be spread apart, and then start slowly stringing it out on the twine. I also highly recommend you cut a good bit of excess off as a precaution because if you run out while you’re stringing it, then you’re screwed.

I will also advise that on your letters that are wider on top or have two halves like an E or the Y & U, make sure you put two eyes in it. It helps you keep it pretty even with the hanging.

To be honest, creating the garland has been extremely fun and I have a lot of notes for what I would do going forward. I think next year I would really like to include some mushrooms with it and some other things.

I hope you enjoy taking the time to create your own garland this year or plan to create one for yourself next year!

Blessed Yuletide,