Christmas Oranges

I decided to decorate our kitchen for Christmas with…what else? Food!

I dried these orange slices last year in my oven and finally did something with them this year.

Six of them were glued to some mat board and framed {same frame from these other projects here and here…}

and now reside above our lovely *cough* oven. Hey…at least we have one! This is a time to be grateful right?

The rest were stuffed in this fake evergreen wreath …

with pine cones from the tree in our yard.

It hangs over our sink and smells delightful…well to me anyway. My husband thinks it smells like Theraflu which is a bad smell to him because he associates it with being sick. Luckily I do most of the dishes anyway.

See our chore charts in the background? We keep them in our window sill.

Drying oranges is easy and if you don’t think they smell like Theraflu :) they make your house smell delicious…mmmm.

Here is what I did last year:

I simply sliced two oranges about 1/4 inch thick. Which yielded about 20 slices from two medium-large oranges.

Arranged them on cookie sheets being careful not to squish them.

Baked them at 200 degrees for half a day…think 7+ hours. Flipping the slices and rotating the pans a few times during the baking time.

Let them cool overnight which helped them dehydrate more and harden.

And that’s it!

I have read that you can add some cinnamon to the them before baking which would smell…amazing…but might change the appearance of the oranges.

With oranges being in season right now, this is a great winter craft. You warm up your house by having the oven going, and you get some wassail-ish smells wafting around too.

Merry Crafting!