Tutorial Tuesday - Valentine's Day Door Decor, a Dollar Tree Craft

Ever since I realized that I could buy silk flowers at our Dollar Tree, that's pretty much all I've used to make my wreaths. Unfortunatly, I can't often find actual wreath forms worth buying there, but hey, I have plenty at home that I can just disassemble and redecorate. My thinking with using the $1 supplies that it doesn't matter as much if I mess things up and hate it. And the wreaths have been so much fun to work on lately. Maybe it's because we have THREE porches that I will eventually have decorated. Somehow. In the meantime, it's nice to be able to decorate a door without all the wind, rain, and ice getting to it, although we have had a bit of heavy winds of late.

 

Technically whats on the front door right now isn't really a wreath, but it is circular. Here's what a look-see:

 

 

I'd originally intended something a bit more, well, more. But after these flowers were on, I liked the way it looks this way, although it does seem to need something...maybe. I can't quite decide, so feel free to give me your opinion. I was thinking maybe it needed more red up around the unflowered part.

 

So, wanna see how I did it? It's so very easy, as long as you have a glue gun. And literally all the supplies came from our local Dollar Tree, where I love to go shop for unexpected treasures. (Also, with our budget, it's one of the few places I CAN go shopping for unexpected treasures...)

 

Here's what I started with:

 

 

If you want to make one just like mine, you'll only need one of the white rose bushes and don't bother with the beads. The tray is from the housewares section and is about 11 inches across. Also, this tray is metal. Over near the paper party goods, they have a larger plastic one, but I liked both the metal AND the design etched in the center of the tray. I thought it added something to the finished design.

 

Not a great photo, but you can see some of the design here. It reminds me of a thistle or a bit of a pineapple motif.

 

 

 

Start by taking your flowers apart. Clip the stems as close to the bottom of the flower as you dare, but not so close it will cause it to fall apart. I was lucky with these in that they didn't come apart easily, so I could clip right up to the bottom.

 

 

 

Here's my finished pile of poseys. As you can see, I hadn't decided to only do the bottom part of the tray yet, so I clipped all of the flowers. *sigh* I'll have to try to figure out something else to do with them. Maybe a winter holiday wreath later in the year.

 

Next step is to figure out where you want your top and bottom. I like to put together something that makes the bottom obvious, especially since I was still thinking of covering the whole circumferance at this point. So, I started with a single white rose and framed it with the two red ones. Attach your flowers with a good bead of hot glue. After I had the bottom figured out, I just started adding the flowers evenly on either side. After I had the two per side on, I decided that it really looked quite nice just like that and stopped there.

 

At the top, on the back, I looped around some of the ribbon and hot glued it in place.

 

 

 

The ribbon hanging off the bottom was just a length that I cut and then looped around the middle white rose. I made it hang the way I wanted it to with a couple of smal beads of hot glue. As a final touch, I added one of the glittery hearts in the center. I figured it's for Valentine's Day, so some bling is good.

 

Let the hot glue set up and then hang. As you can see, mine is just hanging from a  regular, over-the-door wreath holder.

 

 

There ya go! There's less than $5 in the finished project.

 

 The wind certainly makes it rattle against the door when it's blowing hard. The important thing, though, is that it makes me smile when I come and go. Seriously, if you make one using this as your inspiration, let me know. I'd love to see it!

 

Oh, and I should probably show you the sorta inspiration piece that led to this. It's a skeleton wreath that a friend suggested on Pinterest. I did make a skeleton wreath for Halloween, also inspired by this pin, but I'll save that tutorial for the Fall.

 







Shuffle Time!



(Gratutious shot of a train in the snow, taken from our back porch in December.)

I'm going to try to better organize my blogs. I know, about time, right? But it's easier said than done.

Tryl's Meanderings is going to stay pretty much the same. You'll get random thoughts that I get the energy to write about, updates on family things (because I actually have family who reads this), craft and food tutorials or recipes, and random collections of links I find intersting. And I'm going to try to publish something every week - which means I might manage to have it happen every other week. I'm certainly going to try. So, that's the easy part.

Oak and Olive is going to become home of my writing alter-ego. I think. This will make it pagan/earth-centered information as well as a writing site. I'm hoping that means I publish more there as to never publishing something on either Oak and Olive or Laurel Reufner's Lair. I'm going to try to have an article on Lupercalia up soon.

And Bridgette's Scrapbook should be seeing some action once again as I start sharing our adventures with you all. My NaNo attempt this past November was to go back to the beginnings of our group and start writing. The site may also become a discussion destination for our group as we think over our characters and settings over the years and try to restore some continuity. I'll label those posts clearly, so if regular readers want to jump over them, they easily can.

As for Ghost Girl's site, I'm not sure. I need to sit down with my daughter and have a chat. I think it could be an intersting visit if she'd only write for it. (Well, that answers that. It doesn't load anymore.)

So, off to get to work. I hope to have a tutorial up by next Tuesday on how I made a cute Valentine's wreath for our front door. It's a Dollar Store craft, which I love to do for my door decor.

And see? This was a whine free post! I'm almost back to normal after being sick at the beginning of the month. I even called my mom to talk last night! My voice is still recovering, but it's so much better now.

Oops!

Boy do I sound cranky in those last couple of posts. I'd like to chalk it up to 1. hunger and 2. feeling crappy. And I need to clarify that it isn't entirely my relatives' fault that we wound up with so much junk here at home after Christmas. The eldest and a friend of her's were having a party that Friday with about 10 friends invited. Bless her heart, but the Drama Queen jumped at every excuse to add the the food stash for the party.

I still can't quite figure out why, with so many of us either dieting or with diabetes - or both, we make so much sweet stuff every year. We must just love to bake!

Stupid Celery Fast

Well, THAT lasted a long time. Apparently I was getting sick by Thursday night and on Friday I woke up with a full-blown case of whatever crud the girls had been fighting. The eldest had been down with it since a couple of days after Christmas - it really hit her hard. Fortunately, I don't have it that bad and hope not to. However, it kibbituzed the fast. No way I'm suffering both of those at once. I'll let you know when I restart. *sigh*

New Year, New Diet

How was everyone's winter holidays? Our's were nice, getting to spend time with family and being silly. As happens often lately, I was once again overwhelmed by my family's generosity, although I know it's part of how they show their love. And for the last time, I brought home far too many sweets and related leftovers because "no one else would/should eat them and we have friends over every week." Seriously guys, what I brought home this year, while appreciated, was ridiculous. Not even the girls will eat that many cookies. (They were tasty, though...)

And those tasty cookies have led to the new diet mentioned in the title. *sigh* My blood sugars have grown higher and more erratic over the last few months. They desperately need to be brought under better control, but I've let some really bad habits creep in. Back when I was first diagnosed with diabetes, I started cutting back on - or cutting out altogether - lots of foods that I shouldn't eat anymore, but this time it was just too overwhelming. I've been zonked by allergies - and the higher sugars - and a little depressed and wanted my comfort food, dang it!

So, on my birthday last month I agreed to try this crazy sounding diet that my doctor had been talking to me about over the last few months. A doctor at O'bleness had been using it to good affect (effect?) with his diabetic patients. So much so that my doctor, Dr. J., eventually just asked him to send her the info. It was taking a month or more of her patients to get in to see him and get on the program. Many participants had cut back on the diabetes medication as well as high blood pressure and cholestoral medicines. All good things, right?

Ah, but what makes the diet crazy sounding? Well, for the first three days you fast, with essentially a clear liquid diet and three - THREE - stalks of celery a day. When I told her I'd do it, we decided that I could eat as much celery as I want. I like the stuff, and well, it's celery. The stuff is pretty much water with a little fiber tossed in. After the fast you start backing eating solid foods following a very specific meal plan for the next four weeks. It reintroduces carbs starting at just 15 grams the first week and works up to 60 grams by the fourth.

It was the four week meal plan that had me hesitanting and I'm still not sure of how I'll do with it, but I'm going to give it my best go. There's actually a lot of food at each meal. As far as I'm concerned, I rarely eat that much a breakfast.

I started today. So far, I'm not sick of celery....yet. However I was so hungry by dinner time and celery wasn't cutting it. It just made me hungrier. Then I noticed I could have sugar-free jello. Hey, I don't like jello, but it would taste different, right? I ate 5 snack cups. I'm now cheating a wee bit with a mug full of beef bouillon. I need something with a meat taste to it. Sorry.

The hardest part is avoiding all of the temptations! It's impossible in this house not to see or think about them. I'll think, "Oh, I'll just grab a nibble of that or a bit of this." And then I'll remember I'm fasting and have to make the conscious decision not to grab the nibble or bite. It's honestly been exhausting, but I'm almost through Day 1. Now, to just remember in my morning grogginess not to eath anything...

2 DAYS!!!

We've only TWO DAYS left until the beginning of National Novel Writing month and I have no idea what I'm writing. Now, some folks enjoy the feeling of writing by the seat of their pants. Sadly, I'm not one of them. I need a rough road map of where I want to go and key points I want to visit along the way. I haven't got that yet and it's starting to bug me a bit.

I like to use the month of November to push my boundaries. Test myself and see what I'm made of. My first year, it was simply to write 50,000 words of fiction that didn't completely stink. To take a plot idea and run with it. The next year I settled on a middle/young adult work that my kids could read. Two years ago it was erotica/romance. Just how far could I get myself to go with a sex scene? (And yes, I really did suprise myself with that one!) Last year I tried to tackle a sequel to the young adult story, but didn't get very far. Actually, few of us got very far that year. I'm not sure what happened to the others, but I know what happened in my case. Or at least I think I do. I hadn't finished editing the first book and it seemed silly to go on to the next. That and I got sick half-way through.

All of which brings us to this year. What the heck am I going to write? I thought I'd tackle a non-fiction mythology book. It's something I've been thinking about for a good while now. But then I got this sliver of an idea for a true vampire tale, which is something I've also been thinking would be fun to write. And by true vampire, I mean the revenant vampires of folklore. Something truly horrific as opposed to what Hollywood and lit. have been tossing our way. (THAT was my first novel.) However I didn't have much to go on, until last week that is. One the way back from taking a friend home from our meet n'greet, it started to plot itself in my head. Great, right? Except it stopped and I haven't had the chance to think more on it...So, WHAT am I going to begin writing in a few days? I still have no idea, but something tells me it'll be neither of the above, because that seems to be how it's going this year.

*sigh*

NaNo 2012

Ohmygersh! Only 

 

 more days until 2012's National Novel Writing Month kicks off! Are you ready?