In anticipation of the holiday, I want to ask you how you feel about decorating your home with a living tree. I always feel sorry for the trees that people throw away in two weeks, and nobody wants to do extra cleaning.

So I decided to offer you an alternative option for decorating your home and Christmas table with boughs of Canadian blue spruce. With this option trees continue their lives, the spruce do not shatter, it is very beautiful, it can be used for sooo long. You can find it yourself, if possible, or buy at a flower shop, one branch is enough for one composition.

We will need:

• a spruce branch, 1 piece;
• small Christmas balls, toys, beads;
• artificial snow in a can;
• "Oasis" floral fastener (half) and a bowl;
• fasteners for balloons, 1 piece;
• the figure of Santa Claus;
• waterproof packaging paper, 0.6 m;
• ribbon, 1 m;
• floral wire (or any wire, not thick);
• a knife, scissors, a stapler, a pruner, a glue gun (or Moment Crystal glue).

You can buy all the materials at Christmas markets and flower stores.

Let's start :)

First, cut the half of an Oasis "brick".

Pour water into a container of a suitable size and put Oasis in it. Attention! Oasis needs to soak up the water itself, without additional pressure, otherwise dry areas can remain inside. Oasis is a sponge, which substitutes a vase with water for cut flowers. It needs to be watered approximately every three days, renew the water drank by flowers.

While our sponge takes water treatments, we'll do packing. Packaging may be any, as long as it is not leaking water from the sponge to the outside. In our case, we have Christmas packaging with a holographic pattern. We have a piece of 60 cm, cut it in half, right at the coil.

Fold the pieces with a silver side into a criss-cross, put our Oasis soaked with water in the middle.

Use a stapler to make eight folds, four at the corners of the sponge and four between them.

Tightly tie ribbon around the sponge, curl the ends of the ribbon with scissors, adjust the folds to make a sort of a bowl.

Our composition will be in a form of an isosceles triangle, so we need first to define its corners. Use a pruner to diagonally cut three twigs from the spruce branch with a length of about 20 cm. Clean about 3 cm from the ends from needles, they are easily plucked by hand. These ends will be in the sponge.

Put them in the sponge, forming a triangle, vertically at the back and centre and horizontally at the sides of the sponge. Place the twigs close to the edge of the sponge, reserve a place for Santa Claus and gifts in the middle.

Fill the edge of the sponge with shorter twigs, placing them at an angle to the sponge, as if forming a bowl. Apply artificial snow from a can, trying not to spray the paper.

We marked a place in the middle, where the center of the composition is, of course, there will be Santa and gifts!

Take a fastener for a balloon and glue it with a glue gun to the bottom of the figure.

Cut the leg, leaving about 6–7 cm.

Put Santa in the middle of our holiday :)

Next to Santa there must be gifts, after all, have you behaved very well this year? :)

Secure the gifts with a wire to ribbons and fasten in front of Santa, trying to hide the ribbons.

If necessary, you can glue them to the bottom of the pedestal for Santa Claus.

We just have to fill in the remaining space with balls, decorate the spruce with beads and put the composition on a Christmas table. Do not try to use too many toys, they will distract attention from the main things — Santa Claus and gifts :)

Choose balls of different sizes and secure them similarly with a wire.

That's what happens. Between the balls there are still empty spaces, you can see the sponge. This should not be like this, therefore, we fill these places with small fir branches until we close all the sponge tightly enough.

Give the final strokes, spray with snow once again, hang some beads and voila! Everything's ready for the New Year's Eve!

Happy New Year and may all the best happen this year to you!

A photo for inspiration for the year of the Pig :)

Always yours, Olga.