At the December 12, 2022 meeting, Jan Davis presented a special program on Christmas in Williamsburg. She displayed a number of Williamsburg projects that she has done over the years and explained how they are made.
Williamsburg Inspired Wreaths
Items Used in Wreaths
(clockwise from top left)
wire frame ready for adding greens, garden gloves, greens clipped to the correct size for attaching to frame, opened Baptisia seed pods on branch, opened seed heads from iris plant, sea holly, pine cones with wire attached, dried yarrow, unopened Baptisia seed pods on a branch, winter berry branches, dried oranges, dried orange slices, apples, and limes.
Left- Wreath with pine branch base and added apples, pine cones, and winter berry branches.
Middle- Wreath with pine branch base and added dried yarrow, dried orange slices, pine cones.
Right- Plain greenery wreath with a coat hanger used as a wire frame.
These wreaths were also made with flowers from her garden, such as hydranganeas, Artemis, Baptisias pods, peonies, iris pods, and larkspur.
Put both candle and candle holder inside a glass globe and add to the inside of the wreath.
Wreaths can be used as a centerpiece as well, by adding a candle and candle holder
Fruit Towers
Two different fruit towers were constructed as demonstrations.
Starting with the block on the left side of the table in the picture at the top of this section, a wooden structure with nails was used. Apples were inserted into the protruding nails.
A closeup of the apple tower before the top is added.
To finish the tower, a pineapple is added to the top and greens are filled in between the apples. For a sturdy structure, they can be hot glued. Instead of a pineapple, a larger apple can be used at the top.
For this tower, a styrofoam pyramid was used. Apples were added the same way as the previous structure but toothpicks were used instead of nails. Hot gluing them made for a sturdier structure.
Apples were added to fill in the whole structure.
Greens were added between the apples as was done in the first fruit tower. Jan is holding a smaller styrofoam pyramid used in the orange tower in the next picture.
This display was made by punching holes in the oranges and inserting whole cloves. The finished orange tower is displayed on a glass cake plate. Pages from a current Southern Living magazine article are in the front, showing the same display.
Other Williamsburg Inspired Displays
For this arrangement, rhododendron leaves, like the ones in the plastic container at the back of the table can be used if magnolia leaves are unavailable.
Start with a wooden block with protruding nails, like the one located in the bottom left hand corner of the picture above. Arrange the leaves on the woooden block as shown in the picture to the left. The finished arrangement is pictured above with apples and greenery added.
In colonial days, candied fruit on the 3-tier glass plate were meant to be consumed by the end of the meal.
These pineapple candle holders were bought at a previous Welcome the Holidays. They are hard to find these days, but are great to use for a Williamsburg-type display.