Now that Thanksgiving has passed, my favorite time of year approaches: the Christmas season! I love decorating for the holiday, with subtle cozy touches that make my space feel a little more home-y. Something I’ve wanted to try for years now is a dried orange garland. It’s such a simple and elegant decoration and I like the use of minimal ingredients to make something so beautiful. I found this recipe from a blog and embarked on my craft day. The one thing that was clear about this adventure ws that I needed an open afternoon, as this recipe needs a lot of time. Other than that, it’s very simple. These are the steps I followed:

1. Using 3 navel oranges, I cut them into thin round slices (the blog recipe recomended 1/4 to an 1/8 of an inch founds). You can use any type of citrus though, it appears some people use lemons, grapefruits, and blood oranges to get a mix of colors.

2. Put the thin orange rounds onto parchement-lined baking sheets. The 3 cut oranges filled up 2 whole baking sheets.

3. I preheaded the oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, though some articles say to heat to 170 or 175F.

4. I put the oranges in the oven and set a timer for an hour and a half, so that I would flip them a little less than halfway through. The recipe also recommended to open the oven every so often to let some heat out, as you don’t want the oranges to burn.

5. After flipping, I returned the oranges to the the oven to bake for another hour and a half and then flipped again. By this point they were looking a little more dried out.

6. I set a timer for one more hour to check the oranges, though some articles say it takes between 4-6 hours for the oranges to fully dry out, getting darker the longer you leave them in the oven. The total baking time for me ended up being closer to 6 hours as the oranges were cut a little thick!

7. Once fully baked, I left the slices to dry overnight.

8. In the morning, I used a needle & twine to thread the oranges into a garland. Here is the finished product!