Decorated twig tree

Just got back from a wonderful bank holiday weekend at our family house in west Wales. The sun shone, the sea was sparkling and we saw seals, a dolphin and Welsh mountain ponies up on the cliff tops. Our house over there is a time warp, filled with all sorts of old things which, placed in a cool modern context, would look vintage and trendy. In an old house accumulating the souvenirs of four generations, however, they just blend in with the rest of the well-loved stuff. Just goes to show that cool is contextual!

A lovely breakfast centrepiece

We were there for Easter, so apart from eating an obscene amount of chocolate, we also decided to make an Easter tree with branches from the garden. We always make one of these for Christmas, where we spray-paint the branches silver and decorate it with fairy lights and the silver ornaments. I think this would be a really nice thing to do for any occasion. At a party you could decorate the twigs with sweets or chocolates hanging from threads.

Step 1. Gather twigs and branches. We decided to use living branches with blossom and leaves to bring a bit of Spring into the house. Afterall, the Easter story is about new life as well as death. If you're doing this at Christmas there won't be many blooms out, so gather a few dead branches and spritz them with some spray paint.

Step 2. Put some marbles or stones into the bottom of a vase. This will keep your sprigs in their intended places. Fill the vase half-full with water (you don't need to do this is your twigs aren't alive and growing).

Step 3. Arrange your foliage. This is just like flower arranging - pick a 'front' for your Easter tree and put your branches in accordingly. We've used a backdrop of a few camellia leaves and three blossom stems (apple and ornamental cherry).

Step 4. Pour in some more marbles around your branches. These will anchor your arrangement in place.

Step 5. Decorate your branches. We used a few decorations that we found in the house - painted wooden eggs, fluffy chicks and one rather terrifying white rabbit with red eyes. We didn't have much time, but it would have been really easy to make our own decorations by painting blown eggs and sticking little feet onto yellow pompoms for the chicks.

We arranged our Easter eggs round the tree just like Christmas presents and added a bit of festive joy to our Easter celebrations. I'm definitely going to be making one for the next birthday that comes up.