Doll Pin Wreath for My Laundry Room

A couple of weeks ago I was searching online for laundry room decor when I saw a lady that had made a clothespin wreath. She made it to hang outside, but I thought it would be cute inside my laundry room. I wasn't just thrilled with hers, so I wanted to see if I could find any better pictures and then I found a lady that made a clothespin wreath but used doll pins instead. I liked it much better and decided to try my hand at making my own.

This is hers. She added minwax to bring out the natural tones of the wood and hung hers on a door.

I started with a piece of cardboard (that I cut off of a box I found in the closet no less) and traced the outline of the 8" embroidery hoop.

Then I measured ½" outside of my first circle and made another circle. I didn't have anything large enough to make the second circle so I took a ruler and made a mark at ½" and then move it around the circle some and do it again and then just connect my marks.

Get the outside circle cut out and then you need to cut out the inside circle as well. That one needs to be as precise as possible so consider using an Xacto knife.

This is how it comes out. See the outside circle isn't perfect but the inside circle looks a lot better.

Slide it over your embroidery hoop (that's why it needs to be precise - it needs to fit snuggly).

Take your hot glue gun and put a little strip of glue on the cardboard and then slide the doll pin down over it. If you have very much, the pin pushes some of the glue down and it glues the pin to the hoop. That's the way that I went so that I didn't have to try to get the glue on the inside of the pins.

It won't take long and it will start taking its shape. It goes very quickly and I didn't even use an entire glue stick for the whole wreath.

This is the wreath completely finished and all the hot glue dried. I didn't want to hang it up like this, so I decided to spray paint it.

This is the biggest piece of scrap anything I had to spray paint on. I'll have to fix that soon, but anyway - I laid the wreath down and spray painted it with Rustoleum Black (Semi Gloss).

I sprayed one side and let it dry, then flipped it over and sprayed the other side and let it dry. Then I had to hold it up and spray some of the tops of the pins to make sure everything got covered. Waiting for the spray paint to try took longer than making the wreath!

Then I took some ivory ribbon and made a hanger and just tied a simple little bow and hung it up in my laundry room.

I'm hoping one of these days I will get around to painting the laundry room. I'm thinking a taupe color and using black and a colonial/barn red for accents. Until then, I'm just going to enjoy my latest creation.

New Craft Project

I'm going to be starting a new craft project this weekend. I went last week and bought the materials I needed to get started. Here they are:

Can you guess what I'll be making?

I'll post pictures when I'm finished!

Invaded

A few weeks ago we started noticing these little tiny bugs in the kitchen and in the pantry. Some of them were flying around in the pantry and we caught a couple on some shelves and the fruit that we had on the kitchen counter had them too. After asking pretty much everyone we know and doing some research - we found out that they were little tiny beetles. We're still not sure were we got them, but we think it was from the Farmer's market. They were able to get in to pretty much everything - even things that hadn't been opened yet. The advice that we found said that we should throw everything away, and vacuum the pantry and counters.

This was our pantry before. I stockpile because I'm one of those people that don't like going to the store so I get a lot while I'm there and then can make pretty much anything at any time because I already have it in the house.

This is our pantry now - after a trip to the grocery store.

I had to throw away all of my baking stuff - which was a LOT. I had all kinds of chocolate, and nuts and such. It just made me sick. All of my new baking stuff is going into airtight glass containers. Eventually - I'll make some pretty labels for them.

We were able to keep quite a bit of spices, but had to throw out even more.

We didn't have to throw away any can goods, so we were thankful for that. But we did have to throw away all of our pasta, rice and cereal so now I only buy what we are going to use that week or in the next few days. I bought containers for our cereal though.

When it was all said and done - it took 11 contractor (74 gallon) trash bags to clean out the pantry. I wiped down all the shelves and then vaccumed them. There weren't any bugs so we went to Wal-Mart to get containers and some bug spray and we came back and there were about 30 bugs in the pantry. I sprayed the whole pantry down that night and when I woke up the next morning - there were dead bugs everywhere! They must have been hiding in there. The shelves of our pantry are removable so I took them all out, sprayed underneath and behind, sprayed the floor and all of the walls and the ceiling every day until I had used the entire bottle of spray. We never saw any more bugs after the first time. Then, I wiped everything down with colorox and mopped the floor. I waited another couple of days before I moved everything back in to the pantry and so far - so good. We haven't seen any bugs. Here's hoping we don't get invaded again!

Wordless Wednesday

Tell Me About It Tuesday - My Spouse

In high school and in college I had a couple of serious/long-term relationships but most of them were casual and low-key. After one break up in college, I decided to take some time to be single for awhile. After about 8 months, I decided that I didn't want to be single any more but knew that I wasn't going to meet my husband at school, or at a bar, or at church or through a friend - I had gone down all of those roads and none of them swept me off my feet. Then I tried eHarmony and I met Darren in July of 2005. We were wonderful matches online, we hit if off well fairly quickly, were attracked to each other and enjoyed talking - things seemed good. So we talked and talked and talked some more. And when we got through talking, we talked some more. We wound up talking for well over two months before we ever met in person. Then we met and he was cute and he was sweet and he was quiet. VERY, Very quiet. And it totally turned me off. Like, I didn't want to see him again. Ever. So, we hugged goodbye and he told me he would call me. And he did. Because that's the kind of guy he is. And I made an excuse to get off the phone and promised that I would call him on Monday. Because that's the type of girl I USED to be. I know, I know. I called him on Monday and went into this big rehearsed speech about how it wasn't anything with him, I just didn't think that it would work out and he deserved to be with someone who wanted to be with him as much as he wanted to be with her and on and on. And all he heard was "I don't ever want to go out with you again". So naturally, that didn't go well and he cut off all contact with me. Completely. And then the guilt sank in. And when I got over the guilt, the regret came. And it never left. And then came on this longing and this need to talk to him that I had never had with anyone else. I didn't want to talk to him, I NEEDED to talked to him. I missed him terribly and didn't want to admit it. Then, everyone and I do mean everyone started giving me a hard time about it and that I shouldn't judge everything by just one date. A first date is almost always weird. It might go well but there is still that unfamiliarity that you go through that makes it a little off so they urged me to give him another shot. So I did, and I hoped that he would accept my apology and agree to go out again. And I got lucky. Because he not only answered my call, but was happy to hear from me. And without me having to go into this long, apology - he told me that he'd missed me and that he hoped I would have reconsidered. And I did and I can honestly say that it is the single best decision I have ever made. We went out on a second date and since we lived 4 hours away and he was coming all the way to me (he didn't even make me meet him half way) - he met my nearest and dearest friends, my sorority sisters and my family. On our second date! And you know what - he was wonderful. They all loved him and he loved them back. And a few days later he sent me this huge arrangement of yellow and red roses - saying that he had a wonderful time with me and couldn't wait to see me again.

Our 3rd date at the Texas Renaissance Festival And I knew. I knew that he accepted me for me. That it was okay if I made bad decisions and it was ok if I did things I regretted or was indecisive - that he knew that was me and he was okay with it. He didn't necessarily agree, but he accepted it.

It didn't take long for us to fall crazy in love. For Christmas, he gave me a promise ring and in June of 2006 he moved to Houston to be with me. He proposed on November 17, 2006 and we were married on November 17, 2007 and we've been happy and crazy about each other (almost) every day since then.

Our wedding day was the best day of my life!

He allows me to pick out his clothes when we go places so that we can "coordinate" in case there are any pictures involved. He's a good friend.

He always drives to that I can read or take a nap. He dances with me, even though he hates to dance - just because I love to.

He's a good kisser.

He loves kids.

And they love him.

He's helpful.

He's sweet and loving.

He loves animals.

He's easy going and fun to hang out with. He's a caregiver.

He's an instigator!

He makes the weirdest faces in pictures that I love and hate all at the same time.

He loves the outdoors and appreciates the beauty around him in everyday life.

He's handy.

He loves guns and any excuse to shoot one!

He loves to fish - even if the fish are too small to keep.

He loves history and "old" stuff.

He loves to take pictures, and he's good at it.

He spoils Coco!

He's a good "daddy".

He has a sense of humor.

And he's my very best friend. We will celeberate 3 years of marriage next month and I couldn't be happier. I hope that we are both around long enough to celebrate 50 or 60 years together.

Can't wait to hear about your spouses/significant others and I hope you'll join us next Tuesday and tell us all about your kids!

Houston, We Have a Problem

The day before D's birthday in August, I set my ovens to clean and then went to bed. Only it didn't go down quite like that. I layed down, got comfy and then the beeping started. The annoying, extremely loud beeping that was caused by my ovens. So, I got up and went to the kitchen to "cancel" the cleaning process. The only problem with that is that it didn't stop the beeping. So, I cancelled and then hit "clean" again and the beeping stopped and I returned to bed.

If ever it was that easy!

Because I no sooner got back in bed and got comfy that the beeping started again. Repeat this process one more time (because Heaven forbid I take the hint) and then I figured out that if I hit the "timer" button to turn the timer on, but didn't actually put in a time - the beeping would stop.

The only problem is that the ovens wouldn't unlock or work. That seems to be a problem when you have hubby's birthday the next day and he is expecting a homemade red velvet birthday cake. I wound up having to get my little sister to make him a cake. The same little sister that I love and adore but has never made a cake from scratch. It wound up being very good, other than the icing situation, which is a whole other story!

Anyhow - we had two ovens that we couldn't get to work, or unlock for that matter. I had every intention of calling the appliance place in town but then I got busy and put it off and Heaven forbid D make those kinds of calls. So, it was broken for a week, and then another and well then that turned into a month and then it just went on until this week - I finally got around to calling (it only took me 8 weeks). And I just want to say, for the record, it had nothing to do with the fact that it was hot and I didn't want to cook and no working ovens would make a good excuse for that. Nothing to do with that, at all. So, yesterday - the nice men at the appliance shop came by to take a look and decided that they couldn't fix it at my house - they needed to take them in to look at them.

So guess what I'm looking at, my friends?

I don't know how much longer I can pull off this not cooking thing, no ovens or not. D is starting to get a little irritable. It was a little cooler this week so my crockpot made an appearance but I don't always plan enough in advance for that to be an option. Anyone have any good recipes for anything other than pasta to cook on the stove? Happy Cooking (I feel for ya!)

Dollar Store Fall Wreath - It's Finished!

After I added the gourds and berries to the wreath, I still felt like it was missing something, but I couldn't figure out what it needed. I finally decided that I would go buy an "F" to put in the middle of it.

I bought red, burnt orange and some patterned paper because I couldn't decide which to use. Burnt orange was the clear winner, so I covered the F with that, just like I did with the nursery letters.

I played around with it and added it to the bottom, and then to the top and still wasn't really pleased with the look. It needed something different. The F was so plain, and it still felt empty.

I decided to get my antique brown ink pad out and start creating a border around it - to add a little color and make it a little less plain. I decided that it needed more than just a border - that I really wanted to add some "distress" to it so I lightly rubbed my ink pad back and forth over it until I was happy.

And this is what I wound up with. At first I was concerned that I went too far but the more and more I look at it - I'm really happy with it. I like how it turned out.

This is it, once I got it hot glued into the wreath. I decided to put it on the bottom, versus putting it on the top.

And this is the whole wreath, on the office door. The wreath that was supposed to cost me $6 wound up costing me $11 (for the pumpkins, berries, letter and scrapbook paper), but I think the extra money was worth the outcome and I still didn't break the bank!

And this is the porch, so far. I want to get some pumpkins and put out, and fill my little wrought iron wagon with some fall flowers, but I'll have to do that another day. For now, I'm enjoying my latest creation.

Hope you like it!