Pine Swags for the Food Shelf

Back in September when we were making our plans for the 4-H year we thought about making Christmas wreaths as a craft project.  Then someone else said, "Let's make swags, give them to the food shelf and make it a community service project too."  Glad they did because we each got to make about four of these and they were really fun to make and decorate.

 

Started out by sorting all the ribbons, ornaments, bells, beads and other do-dads that everyone brought for decorating the swags.



Dad and one of our older members trimmed all the fir branches to the right lengths.

Taking metal coat hangers, we pulled them from the bottom so that the hanger hook part was still on top but the hanger was now narrow and long.  Pick out just the right pieces to make balanced swag.

 

Using a pipe cleaner cinch the middles together and twist on to the coat hanger.

 

Then add decorations.  Not working very hard we make over 40 of these in less than an hour. 

The kids made a sign for the food shelf to hang up when people come to get their food boxes and a swag.  We had the perfect day for this project, it was about 45 degrees so the kids could run out to grab more branches and didn't even need coats as you can see a lot of them are in short sleeves.  Everyone was already saying, "We need to do this again next year!"