Hello, Seasons Greetings and Feliz Navidad! The supermarket adverts have started and the fairy lights can’t be far behind, we are firmly in the festive season build-up and for us that means wreaths so I’ve decided to ease myself in with some reminiscing on wreath-making past…
2017
In the winter of 2017 Make Do Drink was not even a twinkle in the eye, but I was finally living back in Preston and so I had the flat, I had the foliage, and I had the friends nearby enough to be swayed by an invite and a vat of mulled wine on the hob…
None of us really knew what we were doing, and the greenery was slap-dash at best, but we spent an afternoon snacking on chocolate coins and making really quite flat creations that hung proudly on our doors all December regardless. All my grown up Christmas crafty dreams had come true.
2018
By 2018 I’d done my research and knew what I was doing, I also learned that moss was the answer to basically every wreath based problem. Shape looking a little flat? Moss. Greenery drying out too quickly? Moss. Not enough creepy crawlies in your flat? Moss!
2019
Make Do Drink was here! We’d run a couple of workshops already and brought in Wilderness Flower to steer the ship and leave us free to top up drinks, grab decorations and sweep up cuttings (my god is there always a lot of sweeping at these things! 😂). A professional with wholesale access meant a wider variety of foliage and fresh flowers just for fun, and we also had our youngest ever attendee in the form of my brand new baby niece who I shamelessly exploited for instagram clicks.
At home the wreath-making gatherings had also got a little more ~*curated*~ with dried florals, foraged evergreen and natural goodies…
2020
Well we all know what happened, all of a sudden everybody’s gatherings were personal, private and at home. Undeterred (and hoping to bring a little festive sparkle to a darker than usual December) we launched into zoom mode.
Helen packed up the fiat for doorstep deliveries across Lancashire and trudged to the post office with box after box of foliage, decor and sundries whilst I got to work on my extremely-high-tech-thank-you-very-much camera set-up 😉
Doing a workshop online had the unexpected bonus of having attendees from far and wide be able to join in (we had from Glasgow to Kent covered) and the feedback we got from those sessions is truly some of the nicest we’ve ever had!
2021
Christmas 2021 (which was oooh maybe 4 months ago yeah?) we decided to celebrate being back out in the real world with double workshops including our first outside the city limits. Winter Lodge hosted us in the city centre and we ventured out to Farm Yard Ales for all the countryside christmas feels.
Taking our wreath destiny firmly into our own hands we threw ourselves into sourcing greenery and collecting & crafting decorations (if you added a pom-pom to your wreath last year know that they were hand woven by us truly). We dried our own orange slices, dyed our own feathers and were less than gentle with a few unfortunate christmas trees…
2022
And so to Christmas present! This year we’ve managed to bag one of our favourite venues in the form of Once Was Lost who’ll be hosting us in their extra cosy cabin on Sunday 11th December.
If you join us we’ll be spending around 2 hours building your wreath from the base up, starting with sustainably sourced moss, adding a mix of evergreen and cut foliage (I’ve got a garden now so some of it really couldn’t be more local!), and finishing off with a variety of fresh, dried, sparkly, natural and crafted decorations. There’ll be a drink on arrival and a super laid-back vibe so even if you’ve never tried something like this before we promise you’ll be going home with something completely unique and absolutely door-worthy!!
