Ornament Wreath

I had seen several variations of this ornament wreath all over blogland lately. I knew immediately that I wanted to try making one so I bought all the supplies. Then, one night this week after work when I was getting anxious about Alex's impending homecoming, I sat down and got to work.

First you have to hot glue all the ornament tops to the ornament balls. Some of my ornaments that I bought seemed pretty secure so I tried to skip this step....bad idea. The tops started popping off of the balls and that is not good. So, a word of wisdom: Don't be like me. Do this step. Or else you'll be doing your wreath all over again when the tops start popping off.

My thumb looks so fat in this picture...haha. And please excuse the really old, nasty looking hand-me-down-from-my-mom hot glue gun.

Then you take a wire hanger and form it into a circle. I forgot to take a picture of this step but see the link at the beginning of this post for one. FYI the circle doesn't have to be perfect....the process of putting on the ornaments will kind of mess up your circle anyway. The main reason behind doing this is to smooth out the wire in the hanger so that the ornaments will easily thread on.

Once you have the circle, untwist the hanger's hooky part {that's the technical term} and do your best to smooth out the kinks in the non-hanger end. You know what I mean, right? Right. This part required me to bust out my pink needlenose pliers...yes I really do have a set of pink tools and I loooovvvee them. They were a gift at one of our wedding showers so if you gave us the pink tools and you're reading this THANK YOU! :)

Anywho, just start threading the ornaments on! I had a bit of a hard time figuring out what pattern to thread the ornaments on so that it looked as perfect as the Eddie Ross version. I never figured it out but I basically alternated between a large ornament, medium ornament, small ornament, repeat. I think......I don't know. Just do what you want. :)

Keep threading ornaments on until you start getting close to the end of the circle. Keep pulling the two ends together to see when you have formed a nice, full circle of ornaments.


All I did to secure the circle back together was to bend the non-hanger end of the wire back into a sort of "hook" and then I just hooked it around the hanger end. Once again that probably makes no sense. But that's it! Then I just added some poorly tied ribbon "bows" and hung it.

As you can sort of see in the above photo, I left the hook part of the hanger in tact and used it to my advantage for hanging purposes.

It turned out a big more oblong than circular and it's CERTAINLY not perfect, but I still love it! :)

More Halloween Decor :)

Today the weather around here looks like this:

A.K.A. Pouring rain. The perfect day to do some overdue blogging! {And yes I just love looking out my front door at the house across the street with 50 bajillion cars parked in their driveway and in front. That's not even the full extent of it! There are like 3 more cars parked along the street to the right of where this photo stops and they are there all.the.time. Klassy!}

I know you've been anxiously awaiting more Halloween decor and your wish is my demand! Yesterday at the grocery store I picked up these two beauties for my front porch:

The punks in my neighborhood better not even THINK about touching my pumpkins!! I also replaced my Aggie football wreath with this:

{It's driving me NUTS that this sign is sitting off center but everytime I try to fix it it just gets screwed up again as soon as I close the door. Grr!}

When I bought my large pumpkins at the grocery store, I also bought some baby ones that I am in love with! I used some of them to spruce up my table setting:

Love the pop of the orange on the black and white background of the plates! Here's a view of the whole dining table:

Cute! {If I do say so myself} I have a confession about this table setting...it's just for looks! I had some of my very best girl friends over last night for dinner and they all complimented me on my table setting...except we ate off of paper plates in the living room instead of using it. Hehe! What a great hostess I am!

This is a ribbon garland that I made last year {inspired by this post at Your Homebased Mom}:

{Please excuse the ugly navy blue valance that was here when we moved in...it's on my list of things to replace. Oh and the BRIGHT yellow walls...they are actually much brighter than they look in this photo. Oh the life of a renter!} Here's a closeup of the ribbon garland:

It was super easy! All you do is buy a bunch of Halloween-colored ribbon, cut it into equal length pieces, and then start tying it onto a long piece of cording or rope.

Here's another homemade Halloween decoration that I made last year {inspired by that same post at Your Homebased Mom}.

Thanks, Angie for reminding me about this banner...I had actually kind of forgotten about it! Also super easy to make. I think I'm going to do a tutorial later on how to make this one so I'll leave you in suspense for right now! {Not that it's difficult to figure out on your own} :)

Here's a glass hurricane that I picked up from Goodwill, filled with coffee beans, and one of the mini-pumpkins found it's home on top.

And a couple more Halloween touches:

And just for kicks, a picture of my Libbers:

I'm thinking she needs a Halloween bandana or something to match the rest of the house! She's clashing! :)

Wreaths: Not Just for Christmas

This is officially the easiest wreath to make ever! I have to thank my good friend Connie for the inspiration. She made an adorable Army themed wreath with ribbon so I thought "Gosh, I could do that!" I decided to go with Aggie (Gig 'em!!) and football themed ribbon since football season is upon us!
As with everything I make, it's NOT perfect, but I'm okay with that. It makes my front door looks so much more welcoming!
Here's how I made mine:

Supplies:

-3 different types of ribbon...at least two of which are a bit thicker and are wired
-A plain wreath...mine was on sale
-Hot glue gun & scissors

Procedure:

STEP 1: Glue the end of the thickest ribbon to the back of the wreath and then start twisting and glueing along the front of the wreath. It doesn't have to be perfect! Once you get all the way around back to where you started just cut the ribbon and glue the other end to the back of the wreath.

STEP 2: Repeat STEP 1 with the other thick ribbon, filling in spots the first ribbon didn't cover.

STEP 3: Take the thin, non-wired ribbon and glue the end to the back of the ribbon. Then just loosely wrap it around the wreath, gluing to the back in certain spots as you go. Once you get all the way around cut the ribbon and glue to the back.

STEP 4: Make a couple bows (I suck at bows so please make yours prettier than mine!) and hot glue them to the front of the wreath.

Voila! That's it! So easy, right?!?

An Imperfect DIY Topiary

I am loving topiaries these days! I've been seeing them everywhere lately...blogs, catalogs, stores, and more. I decided a topiary would be the perfect centerpiece for my mantel that needed a serious re-vamp so I went about making one. Yes, I made one. Wanna see?!?! Okay here ya go:Sorry about the blurry pic...I was impatient! Oh and SO WHAT if the stick is leaning a little bit. Get over it! ;-) And it took about 3 times as many fake flowers as I originally anticipated so there is definitely a bald spot at the bottom for the time being (a.k.a. until I get unlazy). I CAN'T BE PERFECT PEOPLE!

So basically to make it I just followed this tutorial on a blog that I love. However I'm still going to type out how I did it because I did change a few things.

1. Spray painted a clay pot with a couple coats of black paint, let dry, and sponged on the white circles.

2. Bought a dowel rod, cut it down to the height I wanted for my topiary, and spray painted dark brown. Then doggie decided to help me with the "weathered" look and proceeded to steal it off the table as it was drying and put some nice teeth marks in it. At first I was peeved about this but then I realized the teeth marks actually made it look more like a real stick! The jokes on me I guess!

3. Bought a styrofoam ball and 4 bunches of fake yellow flowers (they were on sale 50% off...thank goodness because this could get pricey). Like I said, this required way more flowers than I originally anticipated so beware! Pulled all the flower buds off the stems.

4. Hot glued flower buds around the strofoam ball, bunched tightly so you can't see any styrofoam, although I will say my foam ball was green and so were the centers of my flowers so it really didn't look that bad if there were tiny bits of foam showing...it just looked like a flower center...but I digress.

5. Bought styrofoam and cut it to fit in the bottom of the clay pot. Stuck the dowel into the flower ball and into the clay pot styrofoam. Hot glue into place for the most stability.

6. Bought a bag of moss and hot glued moss all over the top of the clay pot to cover the styrofoam base.

7. Voila! That's it. I am probably going to add a decorative ribbon to the dowel eventually to add a little more pizazz.

And to wrap it up, here's my new re-vamped mantel. I forgot to take a before picture but trust me, this is MUCH improved and totally different.It still needs more but for now I'm loving it! I plan on purchasing some fake flower to put in the green vase to add some height soon. I love the green with the black and white, though. Here's another view: