Thrifty Harvest Wreath

I love wreaths.  I wish I could have an excuse to have one up all year around.  I really wanted to keep my son busy this morning, so we set out to make a Harvest/Thanksgiving wreath out of crafty materials I picked up on clearance throughout the year.

Here is the mess of a table that we started with:

Yep.  That is a pool noodle!  I bought it on clearance for 25 cents this fall.  Great jumping off point for us since it is already orange!  Tape the two ends together with clear packing tape, and Voila!  Wreath shape!

Start adding whatever decorations you like.  I chose a couple different kinds of ribbon.  (I love animal prints)

Burn yourself a few times on the hot glue gun, because really, you haven't done a craft properly unless you burn yourself or something else! hahaha.

Add some leafy pieces next.  (I got my strand of leaves with little pumpkins and berries attached on clearance for 2 bucks after Thanksgiving last year)  I wrapped it around and around and then pulled off the leaves that were on the back side, then glued them to the front side.

Next I had to come up with something to attach it to the door since the pool noodle is too fat to sit in one of my wreath hooks nicely.  I took and made a large loop of ribbon in one of the colors I already used and attached it at the top with hot glue.

Almost done.  Next step was to let my son have fun with some gemstones.  He isn't old enough yet to use the glue gun, so I gave him a roll of Glue Dots and a bag of gems and let him just stick them on wherever he felt like.  He is all about things being symmetrical so he was very careful to evenly space them and put the same colors in the same places on all sides of the wreath.  (Yes he probably gets that from me)

It was missing something.  I didn't know what, so I stared at it for a while.  Then a while longer.  Then it hit me.  It just needed a flower.  So we glued on a flower and stuck some of the berries from the leafy strand in the center.  Then we hung it up by sticking a really strong magnet inside the loop of ribbon at the top and sticking it to our (metal) door.

And just because I love playing with Instagram:

All together I think this project ended up costing about $8. (mostly in the cost of the pretty ribbon)  I can handle that!

Simple Hooded Towel

 Hooded Towels were a great invention.  It is just too bad that Zane has such a giant melon for it to go over!  Most commercially available hooded towels are designed for kids with a much smaller head, so I figured, hey, towels are on sale super cheap at Walmart this week, I'm going to make one!  Pattern you ask? Um nope I kinda just cut blindly and hoped for the best, which actually turned out quite well!  In 15 minutes I turned a regular size bath towel and a hand towel into a hooded towel for under $5!! I didn't take a ton of pictures of this one, cuz hey 15 minutes and just a few steps and I sort of forgot about pictures. (oops)

1 - start with a bath towel and a hand towel

2 - I folded in half and cut the hand towel into a hood shape.

3 - sew the hood curve shut, and realize that the shape looks awful, re-sew the curve 3 times to make a nice shape (not the one pictured here).  Then finish the front edge of the hood with a nice stitch.

4 - Cut a rectangle shaped hole in the center of the bath towel while it is folded in half. (No I didn't measure. bad Ang) Sew the hood into the back half of this hole and hem the front half.

5 -Finished hooded towel 15 minutes later = Happy child after bath time! (It is a little big right now, but he is growing like a weed so it should fit him in a few weeks) hehehe.

I plan on making a few more of these, one for the swimming bag, one or 3 for at the lake, and one or 2 for regular rotation after baths!  (I will try to remember to take measurements and better pictures of the next one and update) Super easy, fun and useful for 15 minutes worth of my time and under $5!