Making a Christmas Garland in 3 easy steps

1. Dry your citrus fruit

Slice up your oranges, lemons and limes and place them on baking paper. To dry them put your oven on it's lowest setting and leave them to dry for about 4 hours. After every hour open the oven door to let the steam out. (This also makes the house smell lovely).

2. Glitterify (yes, that's a word) your fir cones.

I found my fir cones under my brothers tree, but you can find them in most local woods, with a bit of foraging. If nothing else, it's an excuse for a walk. I would suggest you gently dry your fir cones, in front of the fir or on the top of your cooker, as they will probably be closed at this time of year, and you need them open.

At this point I would suggest you grab your nearest child as they love this sort of thing.

Then it is simple. Brush some PVA glue over the edges of the cones.

Next, sprinkle glitter all over them.

Until they look like these.

Give them a day to dry.

That's the tricky time consuming bits done.

3. Construct your garland

You will need some nice string or ribbon, I used that red and white Christmassy string, some cinnamon sticks and some star anise, plus, your dried oranges and glitterified fir cones.

You will need a skewer or a kebab stick or similar and a wooden chopping board, to skewer your oranges on

Then it's up to you how your garland looks.

I started by tying the fir cone. You definitely should knot these in place otherwise your garland will unravel. Another tip is cut sections of string and then knot your garland together, trying to do it on one piece of string requires the fingers of a ninja, which I definitely don't have.

Then skewer a small hole in 3 orange segments, and thread your string through. After that wrap the string a couple of times around a cinnamon stick and knot off.

 After this tie on a star anise, which is the fiddly bit, and start again.

When you have enough sections tie them all together and voila!

The actual construction of this took about half an hour, the only thing that takes time is the fir cones and oranges.

After that, enjoy how they look and the smell - lovely.

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