Runaway October

Today we’re going to make this:

Well, you don’t have to but I’m going to pre­tend that you’re dying for me to teach you how to make this sim­ple wreath. Ready?

Gather your materials:

A wreath form– I used a 12″ press­board form, mainly because I had no final idea of what I was mak­ing and because they’re so much cheaper than styrofoam.

2 — 3 yds of wire-edged ribbon.

3 — 4 St Patrick’s day dec­o­ra­tive thingys. I think they call them flo­ral picks?

A Glue Gun and glue sticks — low temp is prob­a­bly best if you have one.

Scis­sors

What­ever doo­dads you want to add. Here I used mini “beer bot­tles” and some fake gold coins. Because what bet­ter sums up St Pats like beer and bling?

Okay, first step. Unroll your rib­bon and fold it in a zigzag pat­tern, kinda like so. Adjust it to make sure it will cover your whole wreath form.

It should like sorta like this from the front.

Now start to glue it to your wreath form. Tuck the end under for the first fold. You’ll have to adjust here and there to fol­low the con­tours. I found it eas­i­est to glue the bot­tom fold to the wreath and leave the top fold loose. If you look closely, you can see my glue marks here.

Con­tinue around until you’re within one fold from the end.

Now guage how much rib­bon you will need to tuck under the first fold and cut it there. Glue the end of the rib­bon UNDER the begin­ning fold and glue in place. Yours should look some­thing like this.

Now flip that sucker over. This is where you pull your flo­ral pick thin­gies apart. Mine con­sisted of wired pieces and well, non wired pieces. I cut the wired pieces out of 3 picks and glued it in inter­vals around the back of the wreath. I chose to do a spi­raly type pattern.

Then go back around and add the non-wired pieces.

Not enough bling, Katie. Go around and add more if necessary.

That’s bet­ter. Now flip it back over and add your doodads.

Once all my doo­dads were on, I used the green stem from my flo­ral pick thing and bent it into a hoop and glued it within an inch of its life to the back of the wreath. Just in case. I want my wreath to with­stand hur­ri­canes. Ta Da!

Now take down your Valen­tines Wreath that’s still up and put up your blingity-bling-bling St. Pats wreath.

Now every­one will know what you plan on doing next week. Wear­ing green under­wear, of course.

Speak­ing of the Valen­tines Wreath you hadn’t taken down, here’s mine. I used Tater­tots and Jello’s tuto­r­ial.

So… What are you plan­ning for St. Patricks Day this year? Any good recipes?

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Sorry, I haven’t posted lately. Things have been more hec­tic than usual around here and the late win­ter light is bad for decent pictures.

I did put together a new list of tuto­ri­als and inspi­ra­tions for myself, though. Proud of that.

Check it out here, or in the side bar.

Okay, so after a 7 month hia­tus, I am back. If you ever want to get com­ments on your blog, just stop blog­ging for a really long time. I hope to be back blog­ging reg­u­larly now. I over­hauled the whole blog, got rid of unnec­es­sary “fea­tures” and setup a new gallery tool. Be sure to check out the pic­tures, by click­ing on the links either above or to the right. I update with pic­tures of the boys reg­u­larly.

New Year by *Sally M*

On another note, 2009 has come to a close. It was a year of ups and downs for us, like I’m sure it was for most other fam­i­lies. We were taken to court by one of my day­care clients, and nice guys always fin­ish last. My hus­band bought me a won­der­ful new home! He also plowed through mas­sive lay­offs at his work and even ended up with a pro­mo­tion. We were sur­prised with an unex­pected preg­nancy and sub­se­quent mis­car­riage. We made new friends, lost fam­ily mem­bers, and all in all I think we weath­ered the storm nicely. We can only hope 2010 is as good… Well, maybe with a lit­tle less of the downs, of course.

As is typ­i­cal for me, I hope that I can use my blog to stick to my New Years res­o­lu­tions, which are pretty typ­i­cal for me, just look at the one’s from years past. But this time I have a whole house to dec­o­rate and make homey. On a bud­get. I also con­vinced Matt to buy this lit­tle pretty for my Christ­mas present…in pink of course.

Cav­allini 2010 Daily Planner

My hope is that I’ll have plenty of space to sched­ule things ahead of time, so that I don’t end up scram­bling the day before a birth­day or 4 weeks before Christ­mas again. My plan is to make Christ­mas presents through­out the year, and maybe setup a cou­ple craft­ing get-togethers. So if any of you are inter­ested in meet­ing to have some good food, a few drinks and make batches of Christ­mas presents with friends, let me know.

I have lots of new recipes to try, crafts to make, sewing to do and I hope to do a bit of can­ning. And by a bit, I mean I think I’ve been bit­ten by a can­ning bug. I found a new source for cheap, fresh pro­duce and home­made jam and jel­lies has never sounded bet­ter. I still need to set up and dec­o­rate my “craft room”. I’m kinda ignor­ing the fact that half of it is sup­posed to be for Matt’s com­puter stuff. We debate over the name of it con­stantly. Matt orig­i­nally named it the S.O.R. — Server Oper­a­tions Room. I’ve decided it’s the Sewing Machine Oper­a­tions Room — S.M.O.R. That’s a  much nicer name, don’t you think?

So those are a few of the things I’ll be work­ing on this year. Wont you join me?

And remem­ber, a blog­ger lives for com­ments. Please don’t be shy. If you drop by, lemme know you were here! To do so, just click on the link below that says “Leave a comment/# of com­ments” and type in what­ever your heart desires.

Thanks for read­ing!