With Thanksgiving quickly approaching, I knew I wanted to create a table arrangement using dried lavender and grass from the farm. We also still have our Cinderella pumpkins from our garden that have been sitting waiting for me to do something with them, too.
What You Will Need:
A pumpkin
A container/vase of some sort to stick in the pumpkin. I am going to use an old plastic container cut down to size and filled with sand.
A pen to trace on the pumpkin.
A knife to cut the pumpkin along with something to scoop out the pumpkin guts.
Newspaper or something to keep cleanup easier.
Garden scissors.
Dried Lavender. You can purchase some through our site at here.
Dried grasses and leaves. You can either find these outdoors or purchase some at a craft store.
When I was originally thinking about this project, I wanted to buy all kinds of dried grasses and branches, but they seemed to be out of stock of the ones I really wanted. I ended up remembering that there were some really pretty grasses down by the creek at our farm so Ronan and I grabbed some buckets and some garden clippers and headed out to see what we could find.
I couldn’t tell you the names of almost any of the grasses that we found, but I was definitely pleasantly surprised by the variety of dried grasses and leaves around our property. While I was collecting for the dried lavender and grass pumpkin thanksgiving table arrangement, Ronan was collecting for his recipe. He would tell me he needed three of this or that, that he had to crush them up, and then it needed to sit in the sun for a while. I still don’t know exactly what the recipe was. It was probably a yucky soup, which tends to be his favorite. We also found a ton of hawk feathers and a few wild turkey feathers, but we looked away from the bucket for a minute, and our dog Dash ended up getting into them and chewing a few up a little.
Gather all of your project items together and lay out the newspaper on your workstation.
Trace your container/vase's circumference onto the top of your pumpkin. Use your knife to cut out the top of the pumpkin and then clean out the guts of the pumpkin.
Place your container in your pumpkin, if using a recyclable/disposable container like I am, trim it down so that it fits nicely in the pumpkin without the rim showing too much. Fill it with sand so the grasses have something to hold them in place.
Start arranging your grasses and lavender in the container, trimming ends when necessary. Be sure to take a step back every once in a while to see how it is looking.
While I do wish that I had long, dried wheat grass and some other fancy grasses, I actually love that I found all of these naturally dried grasses on our property and that I was able to do this with our son.
The experience is better than the perfection of tall wheat grass. Although, don’t get me wrong, I will still be buying some dried plants in the future! Still, it is nice to go out and create projects from your backyard and discover plants and things you might not have noticed before.
