This year, we finally get to hang Christmas lights on our house, for the first time. Our last house didn't really have a great place to hang them, and we had a BEAST of an HOA to contend with, so we didn't even bother for the 2 years we were there. The Home Owners Association regulated color, size, time you could have them on, when they could be put up and when they had to be taken down. It was nutzo! Plus for both of those Christmases we lived there, I was pregnant and not exactly excited to deal with getting outside decor up and taken down! Anyway, this year I'm so excited to be putting lights up outside. Our house has a perfect place to hang them and lots of trees and other things to decorate as well. I'll definitely be posting pictures of how our first attempt comes out.
To get my holiday season going, I decided to jump on some craft projects that I have been wanting to work on. This weekend I was so anxious to get started on some of my Christmas projects. The first was making some winter/holiday yarn wreaths for myself and for my family members. I have been Pinning ideas for the last few weeks about what I wanted to make and how to make the felt flowers to decorate them. I did one practice wreath about two months ago, with fall colors, just so I could see how it would go. I didn't want to spend the money to make a bunch of them for the holidays if it was going to be too difficult or if they were going to come out looking poopy, but I was happy with how the fall one looked so I went ahead and bought the stuff for my winter batch. I would post a picture of my first fall wreath, but after I gave it to my mom to hang at her house (I was like a proud little elementary school kid who wanted to bring home their art project for their mommy!), she accidentally dropped it, causing the styrofoam form to crack. Boo! I have some left over fall yarn and felt though, so I might make myself another one to use next year.
I got a total of six wreath forms (by the way I got them at Dollar Tree! Who knew they had a craft section?! The same size ones at the craft store were $3.79!) and over the past couple of weeks, I have been wrapping them in yarn to get them ready to decorate. The wrapping process isn't hard, it is just really tedious and somewhat time consuming. After the girls get to bed, on nights when they actually get to bed at a decent time, I sit on the couch, watch some terrible TV and wrap some yarn wreaths. I wanted to get some all ready to go, so then I could just sit down and decorate them.
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| In the process of wrapping the white yarn wreath. I've got my process down though! The first one took me 2.5 hours, and my last one took me just over an hour! Woot! |
Yesterday, after I had finished wrapping the forth of four forms (hello alliteration!), I went to my Wreath Board on Pinterest (by the way you can check out my inspiration board HERE) and tried to decide on color schemes and ideas. I had wrapped each of the wreath forms with a different color/pattern so that I could try a bunch of different stuff and see what I liked and what looked best. After I watched some tutorials and looked at some wreath ideas, I made some felt flowers, felt patterns, cut some branch things, grabbed my hot glue gun and went to town. I'm pretty excited with how they came out, take a look:
I think my favorite one is the white and grey one, but I'm not sure, there are things I like about each of them, and things that I would change about each of them too. I think the argyle one came out cute, but next time I'd like to make the diamond felt shapes a little bit bigger. I think that would help it to look less busy. I also like how the striped wreath looks, but I'm nervous it looks a little life-saver-floating-device-ish. Hahaha.
I will be more diligent next time about taking pictures throughout the process, so that I can make a step by step tutorial on how you can make one for yourself. Keep an eye out for that to come in the near future. I also might have a bit of wreath-fever right now, and may have already started planning some for other holidays (Valentines Day, St. Patty's Day, etc.)
What holiday crafts are you guys working on? Send me some pictures of the things you have made, I'd love to see them (and perhaps steal some of your ideas! Hahaha)
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