How to Preserve Autumn Leaves & Branches
Plus drying Hydrangeas & pressing leaves.
Welcome to HOME & HORT, a newsletter that encapsulates the love of home & interiors with the wonderful world of nature, the seasons and gardening, with a good dose of wit and sometimes brutal honesty thrown in for good measure. We are now read in 46 U.S States and 66 countries around the world, celebrating the diversity, culture, race, creed and gender of all our members. One Human Family. It’s the best group of like-minded people ever & I’m so lucky to call it home. Come and join us!
Hello lovely people. Today I’m going to be showing you how incredibly easy it is to preserve leaves and small branches. If you’ve looked online at buying a bunch, or two, then you’ll know they are really expensive. I’m coming to your rescue. I’ll also be showing you how to dry Hydrangeas the easy way and how to dry and press autumn leaves.
But, crikey Moses, Joseph and Mary, it’s been such a disastrous week for me with a big house leak, witnessing three car crashes, one of them a near miss with me and then dropping my iPhone for the first time ever and smashing the back of it. Thank goodness it wasn’t the front, or the cameras, or even worse - beyond repair. My working life (actually most of my life) including this Substack is on that phone!
In between all that I’ve been crafting loads of gorgeous things for you to try, filming it all too and putting together a few autumnal interiors ideas that I hope you might try.
Next week we will be decorating pumpkins (I know I said it would be this week, but just roll with it) without carving and only using natural, compostable products. There’s another big ceiling installation coming up, a guide on styling your front porch and even some tablescaping. So much to look forward to in the coming weeks!
You might have missed the start of this new series of autumnal and winter crafts, you can catch that here. I also wrote a short story from my childhood, woven through some fall crafts and a recipe. You can read that here too.
Our private chat forum is also going really well and people seem to be enjoying it. All paid members can join in and ask questions, or show us a photo of their garden/room redecoration. It’s a great way to make friends with likeminded people and it’s completely secure and free of trolls. We’ve just started ‘Friday Fizz’, where we all meet at 5pm BST on a Friday, obvs and have a toast to the weekend with whatever delicious drink takes your fancy. Why not join us this Friday?
To find out how to preserve your autumn branches, dry hydrangeas and much more over the coming weeks before we start on November styling & talking about Christmas (Get ready), why not upgrade to a paid membership. You won’t regret it!