Hello, this is Jennifer Kirschnick with Baltimore Garden Company and today we have been talking about how to decorate the outside of your house for the holidays. The next thing that we are going to show you is how to make a festive container for next to your front door, this one is a little bit more formal, this would also be a good one if you are celebrating Hanukah or if you have a more modern house. You just first want to get a container that -- I would recommend one that is at least 20 inch diameter and at least say 20 inches tall, maybe 20, 22 inches tall and you can find these at most garden centers, your neighborhood garden center, this one is glazed and you do want to find out if the container, it should be marked on the container or you should be able to ask them on the store, if they can be set outside in the winter without cracking.

If you in an area, where you have to worry about freezing and just like in this container that we are making the whole arrangement, the container is really the main focus and the rest of the arrangement ties it together, but really you want to focus on the container and once you have it, you want to fill it up with either soil, garden soil or floral foam which you can get at any craft store as we said and you just fill it up pretty much to the top with the foam and then you can either make or purchase reef, just simple reefs that are just made out of one simple kind of greens, this is made out of fir and you want the reef to be the outside diameter, to be about the same diameter as the top of your container and this is really easy to do.

This takes no time for you to put this container together and you simply set one reef on top of your foam and then you just take another reef, the same size and put it on top of that one and then in the center, you get some branches, the branches are, you want them to be about three feet long, you can get these at any kind of craft store and actually, I have seen them at grocery stores recently and around the holidays you can get them even at your grocery store, probably and you make sure that they are standing straight up. Just keep placing them in the foam until you have a till you fill the center of the reef. Again, you do not want them going out at angles, it s just possible, you want them to be standing straight up.

You can also use brown branches, if you want to, but I think the way it looks nice with, if you have a blue container with the greens. Again, step back every once in a while. Make sure everything is looking balanced, so that should be enough and just try to fluff the reef a little bit, so there aren t any bare spots that you can see. Then once you have your reef on top of the container and you have your branches in, then you can add some pine cones around the base of the branches and these are pine cones, you can either buy them or you can find them. They have been wired with floral wire to these floral sticks and you just simply place them around the base of the branches in a circle.

You want the same sized pine cones, you do not want different sizes and make sure they are all touching each other in the circle. Fluff it a little bit and then you have a very simple arrangement for next to your front door and I have it fitting on a pedestal so it is easier to show you, you do not necessarily need the container on a pedestal, but this is just something really elegant to do and you can use the pine cones, the container and the branches year after year and just replace the greens every year.