Fresh Rosemary Wreath for Christmas Dinner

Just one more idea to help with your Christmas preparations, in case you are sitting around with all of your presents wrapped wondering what else you can do to snazzy up your Christmas meal. I’m sure I’m the only one left with a list a mile long to do before Santa Claus comes.

This post originally appeared on Design Dazzle a few weeks ago as part of her 100 ideas of Christmas Wonderful. This is a really inexpensive way to add a special touch to your Christmas dinner–especially if you have access to some herbs or other greenery.

I have to give the credit for this idea to my daughters. We were out in our neighborhood taking pictures the other day, when they started gathering a ton of rosemary sprigs from the landscaping, when they realized that it smelled so nice.

While I do not advocate pillaging landscaping for craft projects as a general rule, these bushes are plentiful in our area and were due for a trim. In fact, when I went out today to snap a picture of them they had been cut way back.

Since we don’t have a lot of evergreen options in our desert southwest, it was fun to discover these sprigs. My daughter first made wreaths out of them by wrapping thin floral wire around the the sprigs to form a circle. Her wreaths were really cute, but I was concerned about whether they would be able to hold their shape or not, so I came up with another plan. Of course, it had to be super-cheap, so I decided to use things that I had on hand to form my wreath, making this project virtually free!

Here are the supplies I used:

1 – Fresh Rosemary Sprigs. You want them fresh so they will be pliable. If you don’t happen to have a rosemary bush growing in your area, you might look around to see if there are other herbs or evergreens you could work with.

2 – Canning jar rings. The large size. If you wanted to make larger wreaths, you might look at something like embroidery hoops.

3 – Thin-gauged wire. This one is 26 gauge.

4 – Ribbon. I always stock up on stuff like this during the after-Christmas clearance sales.

5 – Decorative Washi Tape (optional)

6 – Hot glue gun and glue.

7 – Fresh cranberries. I did have to purchase these.

In my first attempt, I used the floral wire to wire the sprigs onto the ring, but I didn’t feel like I could control where everything went as well as I would like. Also, I had to use a lot of wire to attach each sprig, which make the wire somewhat visible. If you had a thinner ring, wiring would work well, but with this thick ring, it was time to pull out every crafters’ best friend…the hot glue gun! Mine is low-temp and didn’t seem to harm the rosemary at all. I did the first round inside the ring to cover the metal there. Then I began at the back of the ring, gluing sprigs around and moving forward until I felt like the subject was adequately covered. You can always take scissors and trim any parts that stick out obviously at the end.

You could call it a day at that point. Add a little ribbon or a tag and use it as a place card. But I thought I could use a splash of color, so I added a cranberry cluster.

Here is how to make the clusters. String three fresh cranberries on to a thin piece of wire. Bend them around to form a ring, and twist the wires tight to make a cluster. Try and leave your wire long enough that it will wrap all the way around your little wreath. You can add just one or a few of these clusters to add those pops of holiday red.

So now that you have an adorable little wreath, what will you do with it?

They look sweet hanging from doorknobs. Or you could hang several in windows.

How festive would it be to make several to adorn the backs of your dining chairs for your Christmas meal?

The red ribbon works nicely to hang the wreaths on my Napoleon-style dining chairs.

Or you can use the wreaths as place cards for your Christmas dinner. The rosemary fragrance should serve to whet your guests’ appetites!

I used a little piece of red polka-dotted washi tape to wrap around the wreath and seal on itself. I cut the notch out of the end to look like ribbon and then wrote my daughter’s name directly on the tape. Really quick and easy!

I hope this has inspired you to look around and see what you have available to you that will help you make your holiday celebrations look like a million bucks–even when you’ve only spent a couple!