Sunday, November 27, 2011

Ornament Wreath to Kick Off Christmas



I can honestly say that I am thankful Thanksgiving is over {isn't that super horrible of me?!}. More than anything, I think that Thanksgiving is one of the most special holidays and I can't stand how every year it gets "skipped over" or forgotten in the wake of upcoming Big Bad Christmas. Unfortunately this year, I had to work on Thanksgiving...it just comes with the nature of being a nurse, and over the years I've learned to just kind of dull my senses to holidays and weekends in terms of having to work those days.



My husband has a very strict "no Christmas crap until after Thanksgiving" policy enforced in our house and I couldn't agree more. While this year we have a rumbunctious, loud, into-every-drawer-and-cabinet toddler during the holidays, it makes me extremely hesitant to even want to decorate for Christmast {do we really need a tree this year?}. But I knew I had to at least put a wreath up on the front door, safely out of my little man's grubby, peanut butter-smeared fingers.




Throughout the year, we have our orchid wreath up on the front door to welcome guests. I made these by hot gluing the orchid flowers that I pulled off of stems from Michaels. Super easy and it makes me so tingly happy because the flowers are so bright and purtyful!



I am a new Pinterest addict and I recently saw pictures of ornament wreaths that people have made, such as these...
So so fun! Definitely a huge upgrade from our fake wreath with pine cones and gold {um, what the heck was I thinking buying that?!}.

You know what's even better about the ornament wreath? It is seriously so simple to make. You just bend a wire coat hanger into a circle, undo the hook ends, and slip any ornaments you want on to the wire. That. Is. It. Yes please!


So I asked my hubbs if I could make this and he said yes. I hit up Big Lots and bought way too many ornaments because I had no idea how many to get! A couple websites that I read said they used 80 and even over 100! Sheesh...


I can't tell you exactly how many I used for this wreath, but I bought exactly 199 silver, green, and blue ornaments...and from the looks of it, I could make at least one more wreath {which I'm going to do for my sweet friend, Kayla!}.


I really liked adding the "acorn"-shaped green ornament to break up the monotony of all round ornaments {not sure if you can see it in the picture}. I hadn't seen anyone do that yet.



I had a tough time deciding what colors to use. I didn't want to do the traditional red and green, I really can't stand a whole lot of gold, but I knew I wanted to have at least silver in there. You don't see a whole lot of silver, green, and blue color schemes for Christmas so I thought I would try that. Plus I knew it was a color scheme that the hubbs wouldn't think of as an eyesore.



Merry Christmas! If you want a picture tutorial to make your own ornament wreath, click here.



Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Baby Headbands

We've got baby boy number 2 on the way so I have to find an outlet for making cutesy-pie baby girl items since I have no cutesy-pie baby girl of my own {yet?}. I have a lot of friends and co-workers who are having girls or granddaughters and they can never ever have too many headbands! Here are a few I made today using this fabric rosette tutorial from Little Birdie Secrets and getting tons of great images from Pinterest.