A Garland of Leaves

Ahh, the bright oranges, reds and yellows of fall seem so far away, don't they?  Winter is swiftly approaching and I am not quite ready for my goodbyes to fall yet.  Our late November skies are greying to white and our trees are nearly bare.  It happened so late this year and fall seems too short.

With this ephemeral season in mind, I decided that we would give Ginny's idea a shot (although I have to admit, it was especially enticing because it gave me a reason to {1} buy beeswax and {2} use the funny little mini-slow cooker that came with our real slow cooker). While the leaves were still falling all around us like little gifts from the sky, we collected them from a variety of trees for our garland and pressed them between the pages of heavy books for a couple of days.

Once the leaves were ready, I melted the beeswax in the mini-cooker (this was, perhaps, the best part--the sweet smell of beeswax might be one of my favorite things in the whole wide world).  Then taking turns, we dipped our leaves into the melted wax and let them dry on some newspaper.

Finally, we threaded a needle with some thicker thread and strung our new garland!  It now hangs on our mantle and although the leaves have lost some of their splendor, it still serves as a nice reminder of those not so long past orange, red, and yellow days.