Patriotic Wreath

Now that we have a house that people actually see, I find myself wanting to give it home-y touches that didn’t seem worth my time at the apartment.  I never bothered with wreaths when we lived in the apartment because we had a private stairwell that led to our front door, so unless someone was visiting, the only person who saw our door was the UPS guy (though he saw it often). 

One day in June while Lo was at a NASCAR race with a friend, I headed to a nursery to get some plants for our raised bed and afterwards I stopped at Michael’s Crafts.  I don’t remember what I was looking for – but I remember that I was sad that day because my mom text and said that she thought their dog Coco (who is pretty much my favorite animal ever, in the universe) was going to have to be put to sleep.  It was especially sad because it was Father’s Day and I felt pretty bad for my dad because he gets pretty attached to his dogs.  She had been very unsteady and falling over and not eating – similar to how their previous dog Jake had been before he had to be put to sleep. 

(Side note: Jake was kind of a gross dog who humped everything even though I think he was fixed.  My dad rescued him from a client because he lived in a dog box 10 feet from a railroad track and no one ever paid attention to him).  (Second side note: my dad kind of steals dog – not literally, but he sometimes ends up with other peoples’ dogs forever.  Three of his last four dogs, except Coco, belonged to others who didn’t necessarily intend to get rid of them.) (Third side note: my dad (not a 4 year old) named her coco because she is brown. Super-creative.  She had two names for a year or two because some of us called her Chewbacca because she looked like Chewbacca as a puppy – we finally relented and started calling her Coco mostly) (Fourth side note: Coco is a cheese hound).

Jake was Coco’s best friend who died when Coco was about 4 – and things were never the same for Coco after that.  She wouldn’t go near my dad at night for years – I think she thought he killed Jake.  She also became rather depressed and neurotic – but that just made her…uh, unique.  Anyway, she was awesome, and I was sad that she was probably going to have to be put down.

Back to the story…I wandered around Michael’s aimlessly – I guess looking for inspiration for decorating and I decided to make a wreath.  I remembered seeing a wreath on Pinterest that used yarn and wooden stars and thought I’d use that as a template (found here once I returned home).  I saw some red bubby yarn on clearance so I snatched that up, along with a straw wreath form, a sheet of sparkly blue felt, a small bottle of white craft paint, and 2 unfinished wooden stars.  I think my total was around $6 after using a coupon. 

When I got home, I laid the stars on newspaper and painted one side white on each.  I thought maybe I’d wrap the wreath in a old white teeshirt but I couldn’t really find a suitable tee.  Instead, I used two white garbage bags.  I tore them at the seam and cut the top off and wrapped the wreath with stripes of garbage bags, taping as needed. Once the wreath was covered, I cut slightly longer than arms’ length pieces of yarn and wrapped them in increments around the wreath, tying each section off.  After covering 2/3s of the wreath, I cut the felt into strips and tied those around the remaining area of wreath.  That worked okay, but the blue section didn’t look proportionate to the red/white sections.  I figured I’d just go back to the craft store and grab another 99 cent piece of felt to make it bigger.

I didn’t think it looked great and was prepared to scrap it if Lo said it looked crappy.  But he didn’t!  He said it was pretty cool – with the different textures (just in case he was just being nice, I asked Kelley about it too and she said it was cute). 

Weeks went by and I forgot to stop to get another piece of felt, but I wanted to get it up in time for the 4th of July.  On the 3rd of July, I dragged Lo into Hobby Lobby while we were running errands and grabbed a roll of blue ribbon. When we got home, I forgot about it in the trunk and took a nap.  And then went to drink wine. 

Finally on the 4th of July, I remembered the ribbon and replaced the felt strips with the ribbon and doublestick-taped the stars to the ribbon.  He helped me hang it from our storm door.  It’s not perfect, but it was cheap and easy! 

I linked up to the Summer Pinterest Challenge on Young House Love (one of my fav blogs!).  Check out the other links for Pinspiration!