Willow Trees

I have been in love with the Pottery Barn twig trees ever since I first saw them in the catalogue.

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And since we had a pretty new patio and stairs leading up to our still unpainted front door, complete with empty whiskey barrels , I just knew that willow trees, DIY’d by us, would be perfect.

We just happen to have a lot of willow around these parts…

So we set out to build our own trees.  We were going to make them a little rounder than the PB ones as we were going to use willow to create hoops to attach the shorter pieces to.  The round shape would fill in the whiskey barrels nicely, too.

Just set them on blocks of wood and add a little burlap and some lights.

Ahh… the best laid plans of mice and men…

After spending a couple of hours in the bush collecting willow and hauling it back on our son’s sled (which we broke in the process), and thawing the willow in my tub overnight, spending a couple of hours twisting the willow hoops and gluing shorter cut pieces to them…. we had nothing.  As soon as we took the one we had made outside, it totally fell apart.  Apparently, hot glue will not hold willow to willow.  Do not try this!  And since we really could not see tying each willow twig to the hoops (just the gluing took forever and about a thousand twigs), we decided to use the hoops for a door wreath and the rest of the willow to tie in bunches for the barrels.

Here is our front entry now.

The burlap mimics dirt nicely, don’t you think?  Maybe it’s all the dirt.  On it.

The stump was a bit of a disaster as well.  I tried to put it in our wood burning stove, but it was too big.  So I had to run out of the house with it smoldering and throw it on the patio.

I mean, I placed it there for added detail and woodsiness.  Yeah.  That’s it.

The willow bunches I think are the right scale for the entry.  After hanging some puny little flower baskets there this summer, I’ve learned my lesson in scale.

So I guess our DIY disaster turned out ok in the end.  I’m happy with our entry and I think I can even leave it alone until spring arrives.

I’m ready to paint some furniture or sew something now.  I’ve had enough willow for a bit!