I’ll admit it – I was seduced by Martha Stewart. It all started out very innocently back in November. I had bought too much swiss chard and was on the hunt for a way to use up the hearty greens. I was doing my usual round of recipe searching – How to Cook Everything, Epicurious, Martha Stewart (usually in that order) and when I got to marthastewart.com, there it was… Where the Wild Wreaths Are. Now, you have to understand, it was early November.  Christmas was close enough to dream about all the projects I wanted to do to celebrate the season, and far enough away that I was still under the delusion that I could do them all – or any of them. I thought about the giant fir tree that had fallen on our property upstate during Sandy, with all those pine branches just lying there in a heap, and those fatal words popped into my head “I can make one myself!”. Needless to say, the wreath experiment was a disaster. I probably should not have let the bag of cut pine branches sit in the arid, New York apartment heat of my living room for three weeks. (On the upside, I did find a great new recipe for swiss chard: Barley and Lentil Soup with Swiss Chard.)

Feeling disheartened by the experience, and with Christmas looming, I dug through our box of Christmas ornaments and came up with a red amaryllis fabric flower and some holly leaves and berries that I had bought a couple of years ago to decorate a wreath. I dug around a little more to find the perfect finishing touch.

Now the question you might ask yourself when seeing this image – after “Is this the Prynnes’ residence?” –  is “Why does that paint color exist… in glossy?! And, why would anyone choose it for their front door?!” . I know. These are questions I ask myself every day as I’m climbing up the five flights of stairs to our home. The door color is actually the “accent color” of our building hall and stairwell. The main color that it’s “accenting” is closer to Yarn Harlot’s  Saddle Tan.  You can see now why I like to liven things up a bit for Christmas.

In fact, why should our door should be welcoming and cheerful only at Christmas? So off I went this week to my favorite fabric flower store on 28th Street, Pany Silk, and found a nice combination of flowers and leaves that I wired together to replace the holiday flowers and bring in the new year.

I haven’t decided yet if it’s a little much for our apartment, it might be better on the front door of the cottage. But, I do like how it’s a nice relief to the dreaded “color” and strangely enough, the berries seem to work well with it. I’m inspired now to work with the ugly door, instead of ignoring it most of the year.  Maybe I’ll do different wreaths for each season. We do have masses of pine cones in our yard…