Happy Fall Ya'll!

Supposedly fall has arrived. It certainly does NOT feel like fall outside, but that's a-okay by me since I'm all about hanging onto that last little bit of summer. But since I know cooler weather is on it's way I must at least try to get into the fall spirit. Ugh. Since we don't have any little ones running around the house and aren't planning on throwing any sort of Halloween party, I figured decorating the inside of the house would be a waste of time. But we might have some trick-or-treater's this year since we're in a new neighborhood so I could at least try to decorate outside. Hold the phone. I don't want to go all out with hay bails in the front yard and orange lights and pumpkins all over the place. Let's keep this simple. Since our front door is looking a little boring and plain, I decided it might need a wreath - now that's nice and simple.
Lately I've gotten the DIY itch, and decided I would check out the wreath's available at my local Michaels to see if I could duplicate (or improve) something while spending a little less money. All the wreath's large enough for our front door that weren't too tacky looking were in the $25 to $30 price range - not what I had in mind. So after spending about an hour in the store, I ended up walking out with a twig wreath, two flower bouquet's, two packages of loose leaves, two spools or ribbon, and one leaf garland all for $13.20. SCORE! Everything I bought was on sale except for the wreath, but I had a 40% off coupon that I was able to use for that.

I can't tell you how excited I was to start this project (just call me a HUGE dork!) so I was glad when the DH told me he had baseball practice the next day and that it would be a perfect time for me to start on my wreath while he was out molding young minds. YIPPIE!

I started off by stripping the leaves off of the garland and small bouquets. This turned out to be easier than I expected - no cutting needed, just a gentle tug and the leaves came right off. Then I used the huge wired ribbon I found for $1 and tied a bow to the twig wreath where I thought the top should be. Apparently I need to get my sister-in-law to show me how to make pretty bows again since mine ended up looking a little sad and droopy. I figured having the ribbon on the wreath before I started attaching the leaves would be easier than trying to work the ribbon in at the last minute, and boy was I right!




Now came the fun part - attaching the leaves. I started in random sections, hot gluing one leaf at a time making sure to attach the leaves in random directions since I was going for less structured look. I also found that if I attached two or three leaves in one spot all at once made it harder for those leaves to stay in place. Attaching one leaf to opposite sides of the wreath allowed the glue to dry and set and gave it a more random look. Here it is in progress:

After a few burnt finger tips, and a huge mess left on our office floor, I was pretty satisfied with my end result. I hung it from the office door knob to see see what it looked like and found a few blank spaces that needed some extra poof. Luckily I didn't end up using all of the leaves, but I'll save them in case I decide to make something else. I used a thinner wired piece of ribbon to make a loop on the back of the wreath so that I could attach it to the front door.




When the DH got home that night from practice he said our house was starting to look festive - which made me super happy. Goal accomplished! Now if I could just get that bow to look pretty.....