Manzanita Trees (Part One)

Yes... there is more than one part for this one and yes, this post is about trees. My parents could stop scratching their heads and actually see what we have been talking about for 14+ months. They thought I was insane for buying tree branches from Nettleton Hollow when we essentially we live in a forest! Chris and I worked on our manzanita trees last weekend. We will show you the final product in a future post when we get the hanging votives on them.


*DISCLAIMER: Please excuse the mess of the garage. I am in the process of packing and hording furniture. My parents have been without a garage for a VERY long time and it is all my fault.

This is a gratuitous picture of Chris and a bit of the tree. He's so dreamy!

First, my mom painted "R" and "C" on the black pots that we got from Jamali Gardens. We got square Styrofoam from Jo-Ann Fabrics and a little tub of joint compound from Home Depot. Chris drilled a hole in the styrofoam so the tree would fit and then put the compound in the hole.

Here is the tree stuck into the compound. To make sure that the tree would stay in place while the compound was drying, we hot glued the edges where the tree met the styrofoam.


Then we took little round rocks that we got from IKEA and hot glued them to the styrofoam.

Then we filled (hot glued) in all the cracks between the rocks with reindeer moss that we got from Jo-Ann Fabrics. We made sure we hot glued extra moss at the base of the tree to cover the compound. Essentially, all of the styrofoam is covered. (Better pictures will follow!)

So, the whole thought is that we will string our placecards between the two trees in the cocktail hour room. We are really happy with how they came out!