The easiest way to spruce up an ugly fake garland

My husband takes a lot of pride in taking care of things outside. He hangs Christmas lights every year (which can be treacherous at times in icy Idaho!), and I so appreciate it. So when he asked me to hang this hideous garland around our front door, I had to make it work.

But really. What can you do with an obviously fake, high-water garland? The only things it had going for it were 1) lights and 2) we already owned it.

But with 10 minutes of work and zero dollars spent, we made it look presentable.

You can do the same with your own lackluster garland. Here’s how:

• Hang the garland. Make sure it’s centered.

• Cut a few branches from your evergreens. If you don’t have evergreens in your yard, pick up throw-away branches at the street vendor selling live trees, where they shouldn’t cost much (if anything).

• Cut big branches into smaller sections. Try to get as close to the length of the “branches” on the faux garland as possible, but don’t stress about size too much.

• Make the garland work for you. The fake branches are wired, so start at one side of the garland and wrap the wired branches around the real.

The arrow is pointing to the spot where a wired branch is wrapped around a real one.

• Add as many or as few real branches as you want. Because the shortness of the garland was annoying, I added enough real boughs that the garland would puddle on the ground. Then I wired branches up the sides and across the top.

Here’s a side-by-side look at the before and after:

In 10 minutes, the garland looked less fake and more lush. If I wanted it to look really amazing, I could have spent 10 more minutes hanging more branches, but I was cold and it looked good enough.

Hope this helps some of you get more excited about the garland you already have. Merry Christmas! •