DIY: Book Page Wreath

Back in January, we had some friends over for a fondue night and to celebrate Sarah's birthday.  The meal was great, but unfortunately, due to the week's events, I completely forgot to get my friend a birthday gift.  D'oh!  Luckily, I had plans to see her last night so I could finally give her a gift.  I found the perfect gift for my gardening friend online...a Wine Bottle Plant Nanny.

The concept is simple - fill an empty wine bottle with water, place it upside down in the Plant Nanny, stick the Plant Nanny in your plant, and then just go about your business.  The Nanny takes care of watering your plants for you. 

(Both Plant Nanny images from Amazon.com.)

Awesome, right?  The only problem with this perfect gift is that it was sold out everywhere.  Geez! 

Feeling defeated in my hunt for the perfect gift, I decided maybe I should make something.  I do like to be crafty, afterall.  After finding this cute wreath online, the decision to go the crafty route was set in stone.  This would be perfect for my gardening nerdy book reader friend. 

(Image from Living With Lindsay.)

The best part was that I already had most of the supplies on hand.  I sent Doc to Michael's after work one day to grab a styrofoam wreath, and then I was all set.  I read the online tutorial one day at work and then just decided to wing it at home.  I'll show you how I did mine just in case you have any interest in making one for yourself.

The first thing I did (and this was not part of the tutorial) was wrap my styrofoam wreath.  I used leftover dropcloth fabric from this project since I already had it on hand. 

I did not even try to make it look pretty.  There was no need for perfection since you wouldn't be able to see it.  I just wanted to make sure the styrofoam was covered so it wouldn't disintegrate when I started putting hot glue all over it.

Next step: find the perfect book.  I wanted pages that weren't white-white and I didn't want a very wide book because I didn't want the pages on my wreath to stand up too tall. 

The winning book:

I have no idea why we have The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need on our shelf, but I'm pretty sure it was just collecting dust there.  Actually, I do remember that when Doc bought the house we live in I purchased a box of old books from a yard sale to help fill up the built-in bookshelves.  Maybe that's where it came from.

To make the pages look aged, I smeared brown craft paint on the edges of the book. 

The dried paint did make the pages stick together a little, but they were pretty easy to pull apart.  Just do it carefully and only one page at a time.  If you get overly excited about tearing out pages and try to do a handful of them at a time, you'll just end up ripping them all.  Trust me, I know.

Once the paint was dried and I had ripped out a handful of pages, it was time to start gluing them to my wreath.  The first layer actually got glued to the back.  I just folded and rolled the pages different ways (but without creasing the folds), loaded them up with hot glue on the bottom edge, and stuck them down along the perimeter of the back of my wreath.

Here's how it looked from the front once I flipped it over.

To glue on the remaining rows of pages, I had to fold a little ledge on each rolled page to create a surface to put the glue on.  I folded it like so:

I glued the next row of pages down as close to the base row as I could get.

Here's how it was looking after two rows - the base row on the back and one row on the front - had been glued down.

Then was when I realized I had a big, big problem.  I was already on page 101 of my 170-page book, which meant that I'd already used 59% of my pages and was definitely not 59% finished covering my wreath.  Uh-oh.

So, back to the bookshelves I went, this time searching for a book that was similar in width and in color to my Investment book.  Here's where you should learn from my mistake by either choosing a very thick, fat book to use or having two matching books on hand from the get-go.  

Luckily, Sandra Brown came through for me and was able to lend a hand with her Tempest In Eden.  (I'm hoping this was another yard-sale purchase and not a book that Doc had in his collection.) 

Now, even though I still had a few Investment pages left to use, I decided to go ahead and switch over to the Tempest In Eden.  While the color of the pages were definitely close, there was still just a slight difference.  I wanted to be able to work my remaining Investment pages in later, so I saved them. 

Off I went, rolling, folding, and gluing my pages.  After a while, my wreath was beginning to shape up.

For the last row of pages in the center of the wreath, I did not fold the pages.  Instead, I glued them down just like I did the base row, except these were glued to the inside of the wreath form.  I liked that the height of them was a little bit lower than the other pages - it made the wreath look a little curved. 

Here's how the wreath looked at this point, with all the rows glued down.

The wreath looked fine at this point and it would be totally fine to stop there.  I had decided, though, that I wanted my wreath to be really thick and full, so I decided to fill in some of the holes that you can see.

This is where those leftover Investment pages came in handy.  I used every last page of Tempest In Eden  to complete the rows and so I wanted to sprinkle in the Investment pages (and their slightly darker color) throughout the wreath. 

For this step, I was not going to be folding down the end of the page to make a shelf to glue to.  But, I didn't want these pages to stick up further than the other ones (that were shorter due to the fold).  So, I rolled them up like the others...

...and then cut off about the same amount that I folded down on the other pages.  Then I smothered all sides of the end in hot glue.

To add it to the wreath, I just found a hole and slid it right in.  It glued itself to the base of the wreath and to other pages.

I was ok with the page unrolling a little bit so that it would fill in the gap.

I'll be honest, I'm a little OCD and can be a perfectionist about things, so I spent a loooong time filling gaps.  Plus, I wanted to use up all of my pages.  Why not, right? 

After all my pages had been glued down, I decided to clean up the back a little by covering it with another piece of dropcloth fabric.  Here's where you can learn from me again - trace your styrofoam wreath BEFORE you start gluing pages to it.  I obviously did not think to do that and just kinda had to wing it.  I traced a couple plates and then trimmed down my circle to fit.  Then, I just glued it to the back using more hot glue.

For the last step, I created a hook to easily hang the wreath.  I used a small piece of ribbon and glued it together like this:

Then I hot glued it and pinned it onto the wreath.

Finally, my wreath was complete.  Yay!

Here's an iPhone photo of it in the daylight so you can kinda see the different page colors.

I'm very pleased with the way it turned out.  I have to admit, I was tempted to just keep it for myself.  But, I guess I can always make another one, right?  Hopefully it will find a good spot to hang in Sarah's home. 

Here are some different versions of book page wreaths I've found online.

Found here:

Found here:

Found here:

Found here:

Obviously I'm biased, but I like the way mine looks the best! :)  Happy very-late birthday, S!

Spring Has Sprung!

Hooray for spring finally being here!  We enjoyed the beautiful weather this weekend and spent as much time outside as possible.  Let's hope this nice weather is here to stay for awhile. I'm going to warn you now that this post may be all over the place.  I'm flipping through our recent pictures, so who knows where this will end up.

The kids had their spring break last week, and since Doc was able to take a few days off work, we were able to keep them for a few days.  First order of business?  Building a fort in the living room.

Wyatt organized a basketball game that was scheduled to be played at 5:00 the following day (giving me enough time to get home and change clothes).  Anna and Wyatt were chosen as team captains and got to draw their teammate out of a cap.  Our teams ended up being Girls vs Boys.  We also had to draw from the cap to get our team name. 

Anna and I were the Fighting Geezers and drew red and blue as our team colors.  I thought the excitement over the match-up might die down while I was at work, but I was wrong.  As soon as I walked in the door, everyone was waiting on me to change clothes.  Wyatt had made signs for everyone's uniforms and a scoreboard.  Doc's iPhone was the official timekeeper.  But before we could play, team photos had to be taken.

The Fighting Geezers, in red and blue:

 

The Wild Chickens, that were supposed to be in black and white:

It was an intense game.  We played two 10-minute halves and in the end, the Wild Chickens ended up beating the Fighting Geezers by around 5 or so points.  I thought Anna and I did pretty good, though, considering we don't play basketball nearly as often as our opponents do. 

After the game we took a walk to the park.  Anna enjoyed posing with Lolli on the playground.

Lolli wasn't so sure about hanging out in the fort part of the playset...

...so Anna helped her find a way down.

I love it when the spring flowers start showing up everywhere.  I am especially enjoying these flowering trees in our neighborhood.

This picture is a few days old, but I still like it.  Lolli and Henry have decided they'll be friends.  Thank goodness, since they get to spend a lot of time together.  I caught them napping side by side at my mom's house.  Of course, Lolli had to look up when I took the picture.

Henry had a bit of a scare this weekend.  My mom texted me Saturday morning around 8 and told me he was missing.  He had been out since 6:30 and I guess when she realized she didn't hear him barking like normal, she and my dad went out looking for him.  He was nowhere to be found in the backyard.  My dad was supposed to be meeting Doc at the golf course, but since they couldn't find Henry, Doc went to their house to join in the hunt.  I think they all walked the neighborhood calling his name, but he never came running.  Finally, when my dad and Doc were driving the street behind my parents' house, Doc spotted him in the corner of someone's backyard.  Doc said he was so frozen he looked like a stuffed animal.  My dad jumped the fence and even as he approached him, Henry wouldn't move.  He never barked.  He had one leg tucked up underneath him - Doc thought he was missing a leg at first.  He was pretty glazed over, but they inspected him and didn't find any blood or bruises.  When he got back home he relaxed and has since returned to his normal self.  There has been a huge owl hanging out in the neighborhood.  My dad has seen it himself on a couple of occasions and several cats have turned up missing.  Could the owl have helped Henry over the fence and to the neighbor's house?  Who knows?  All we know is that something happened to poor Henry that frightened everything out of him. 

Once we were all satisfied that Henry was ok and would fully recover, my mom and I headed out on a shopping spree.  We were in the mood to find some junk pieces to fix up and headed out looking for some yardsales.  Unfortunately, we only found one and it didn't have any furniture.  So we headed to some junky antique stores.  I like looking at organized antiques, but I'm not sure that I'm cut out for the junky stores.  They were way too gross and creepy for me - I think I pretty much ran out of one when I saw a huge hole in the ceiling.  I think I was terrified something might crawl out of that hole and I didn't want to stick around to see it.

We didn't have any luck with the yard sales and antique stores, but we randomly stopped at a Going-Out-Of-Business Sale at a local furniture store, and it's safe to say we found our luck!  Two U-Haul trucks full of luck, to be exact.  This store is closing in 3 weeks and everything had to go!  (Is it just me or all furniture stores always going out of business?  "Everything must go!")  We took a few things off their hands - a couple couches, coffee table, end tables, tv stand, and 4 mattress sets.  It was a crazy, spontaneous move on our part but we felt like we just couldn't pass up on the deals!  I'll let you in on our plans for this new stuff soon. 

We left the furniture store without a clue as to how we planned on getting all home.  No one in my family owns a truck.  I called Doc to figure out his whereabouts (he had been out playing tennis), and it turns out that he was pretty close to a U-Haul store.  He rented a truck and headed over to the store to get all of our goodies.  Unfortunately, they only had a small truck available for him and there was no way everything would fit into it.  The distance from the furniture store and my parents' house (where we decided to take our new items) was just under 2 hours round trip.  So that's how we ended up spending our Saturday night - the crazy decision that mom and I made that afternoon didn't put Doc and me at home until around 8:30 that night, and we were exhausted!

Since the weather was so nice yesterday afternoon, I decided to rinse out our kitchen rugs.  Doc looked at me like I was crazy but I reminded him that I was the one there when Minnie got sick all over them on her last day.  Even though I have scrubbed them like crazy, I still felt like it couldn't hurt to give them a good rinse.  So that's how we ended up with this in our side yard:

Doc helped me get them up on the ladder and also came up with this idea to give them a good cleaning:

Don't worry, we poured the last of the windex out and filled it back up with regular soapy water.  It was awesome!  Who knew pressure washing some rugs could be so much fun?  Unfortunately, they are still dripping wet.  By the time I had them both done, all of the sunny spots in our teeny yard were gone.  But they'll dry eventually and then they'll (hopefully) feel like brand new rugs!  Until then, we'll just keep cooking in our bare and echo-y kitchen.

I told you this post was going to be all over the place.  From basketball to dogs to U-Hauls to rugs.  Between all of that I completed a fun craft project.  I'm working on a post to show you all the details next.

Birthday Loot

Can I be completely materialistic for a minute and just say that I totally RACKED UP on my birthday!  Seriously, birthdays are the best.  Especially mine.  :) Please allow me to show off some of the super cute stuff I got.

First, from my friend Jenny, this cookbook holder.  She brought this same gift to our girls' weekend gift exchange and I was major bummed that I didn't get to take it home with me.  Now I have one of my own!   I especially love how the ball-and-chains hold the pages down for me.

Mary Elizabeth not only reads my blog, but she also reads my mind.  See, when I added the dish towels from Bed Bath and Beyond to my birthday wish list, those weren't the ones I was really looking for on their website.  I saw some dish towels at Allison's house that I thought would go great in my kitchen but they weren't listed online.  Assuming they were no longer available, I added different ones to my wish list.  Well, Mary Elizabeth ended up giving me the ones I was looking for!

Beth, my oldest brother's wife, emailed me way in advance and asked what I'd like for my birthday.  I told her I needed a neck wrap to soothe my aches and pains from sitting at a desk all day.  She came through with this awesome neck wrap and eye mask set that can be both heated or chilled.

I could feel it's healing powers before even taking it out of the package.

Erin, my other brother's wife, knows that baking cupcakes is my thang.  First, she got me the coolest cupcake carrier that has a built-in display stand with it.  I can now take my cupcakes anywhere I want and then pop up the stand and display my mini cakes as soon as I reach my destination.  I am super excited to use the cupcake batter dispenser that came along with it.  I currently use a tablespoon to spoon my batter into the cups - at least 3 spoonfuls per cup - but this hand dispenser is not only going to make this step so much easier, but it's going to make it go much faster too!

Also in my package full o' goodies from Erin was another set of dish towels.  Once again, not the ones on my wish list, but even cuter ones!  I'm starting to think you guys know what I like even more than I do.

At this same party I opened a box full of cute clothes from my mom and dad.  Two cute spring tops, a cardigan, and a summer dress all from Banana Republic.  I love them all and really want to show them off since they're so cute, but I forgot to take a picture.  Whoops!

On my actual birthday, I got to have lunch with some of my girlfriends.  Even though I insisted it was not a birthday party, my sweet friend Kendra still showed up with a present.  She bought me the Ann Taylor Loft shirt from my wish list!  Yay!

On a semi-related note, last weekend I went to the Loft to finally purchase the oh-so-cute yellow skirt to go with the striped shirt above.  They didn't have it in my size at the store so I decided I'd just order it online.  Yesterday I got my coupons out, went to their website, clicked on the yellow skirt, and saw that, due to popular demand, it was no longer available.  NOOOOO!!!  Seriously?  How could this happen?  Major sad face.  (If any of you see it in your local Loft store, snatch it for me!)

Doc's parents sent me two presents in the mail (yay, snail mail!).  I waited until my birthday to open them.  Inside I found a hand-beaded necklace and matching pair of earrings.  Right up my alley!  The pictures Doc took of me opening them are still on my camera, but I just so happen to be wearing the jewelry today so, just so I could show them off, I had  a coworker take a picture of me.  You really can't see the earrings in this picture, but trust me, they're super cute!  (And apparently my blog is cropping off part of the necklace, too.)

In addition to sweet Lollipop, Doc also got me a new pink cover for my iPhone.  The cover is soft and smooth like buttah in my hands.

And, because he is such a sweet husband, he sent me flowers to work.  I love a fresh bouquet at work and especially love his thoughtfulness, but this particular arrangement has made me laugh.  Doc ordered the arrangement through FTD.com.  On their website, you can pick the bouquet you want and then choose the version you'd like delivered:  good, better, or best.  (Obviously the size and price go up depending on which version you order.)  Doc sent me this picture of the arrangement he chose - this is the "better" picture but he ordered the "best" version of it.

A beautiful spring mix, right?  Well, after you make your purchase on FTD.com, they send your order to a local florist so they can prepare the arrangement and have it delivered.  I'm not sure how the florist is chosen, maybe it's just the luck of the draw?  If so, we did not get very lucky.  A florist called Blooming Gardens got Doc's order and by that afternoon, this was on my desk:

 

Hmmm...at least they got the colors right, I guess.  Half the flower stems weren't even in water when I got it because the water was so low.  And the "bow" looks like it might be the end of the roll since it's just tied in a knot and the right side has the creased fold under that rolls of ribbon have at the end.  I think they may have also gotten the size proportions between the vase and the flowers in the original picture backwards.  I hesitated to tell Doc about it but when he asked me if they were pretty, I couldn't lie.  I wanted to make sure he didn't spend more money at this florist in the future.  He was pretty hot when he saw the pictures of it and left a bad review on their site, but in the end, it's the thought that counts and I love that he thought of me.  I, for one, am able to laugh about it and the bouquet does make me smile every time I look at it, so it's serving its purpose.

Thank you, friends and family, for all of my goodies and for making me feel so loved on my birthday!

Bubbly Birthday

Well, as I write this I am officially a year older!  And apparently feeling it, too, since I'm lying in bed and it's only 9:00. I had a wonderful birthday yesterday!  I often say that I'm terrified of technology taking over the world and I'd be ok if we just didn't have it, but it does make it easier for a girl to feel loved on her birthday.  Between the phone calls, texts, emails, tweets, and facebook posts, I felt like every time I turned around someone was wishing me well.  I only received one paper card in the ol' snail mail (props to you, Meghan, for going old school) instead of the handful I feel like I received in years past.  So, just for my birthday, I decided to call a truce with technology and bask in all the warm fuzzies it was sending my way.  (Yes, I realize the irony of my hate for technology as I sit in my bed typing a blog on my laptop.)

I better get to the point of this post before I stray too far off topic and find myself standing on top of a soap box.

The topic of this post?  My family birthday party this past Sunday.  But before we could party, we had to catch bubbles.  And before we could do that, I had to put batteries in the new bubble maker.  And who patiently watched and waited for me to get it all ready?  Bren.

She's so silly.

Who knew the $8 bubble maker from Walmart would require a screwdriver to put the batteries in?  Bren was a good sport about it while I muttered four-letter words under my breath.

Finally, we had bubbles!

Is there anything in the world cuter than a two-year-old playing in bubbles?

Right as the bubbles really got going, we got some company!

I didn't check the package, but I'm guessing that it probably says somewhere on it not to let a five-year-old dispense the bubbles right into his little sister's face.  But hey, no harm no foul, right?

Kinda makes you want to go buy some bubbles, doesn't it?

After our bubbly adventure we went in to get ready for dinner.  I tried to get some birthday lovin' from my little people, but someone (ahem, cough cough Lolli) keeps stealing all my kisses.

At least I was able to squeeze a hug out of Parker.

I even got a kiss on the cheek before he ran off and left me for his real true love - his mommy.

Dinner was my request - tacos.  But my mom made 3 dips too and I would've been happy just eating those.  Man, I love chips and dips.  Remember the Peanut Butter Chocolate Pie recipe I told you about?  And the 8 candle from the bowling party?  Well, put those together and you get my birthday cake!

I was excited while everyone sang.

Even with only one candle, I had to have some help blowing it out.

I may have gotten more help than I bargained for, as we had to do a little blotting on top of the pie afterwards.  Good thing I like that little boy!

The pie, made by Doc, was just as delicious as I remembered it being.  It's safe to say we all headed home full and happy.  It was a great birthday celebration with my family!

Bowling Birthday Party

I have awesome friends.  I may have mentioned that before. My friend Chris (Allison's husband) and I share the Ides of March as our day of birth.  We are exactly one year apart.  To celebrate our birthdays, our in-town friends met at one of my favorite local restaurants, Swanky's, for dinner Saturday night.  We had the perfect sized group of ten and the food, drinks, and conversation were all so good!

Doc had reserved a couple of lanes at a bowling alley for after dinner.  Isn't it crazy that you have to make reservations to bowl these days?  We had to pay a cover charge at the door, too.  But it was worth it.  I should've known my awesome friends would go all out.  Jenny and Allison turned our bowling night into a birthday party, complete with banner, noise silent blowers, and Muddy's cupcakes.  Oh man, the cupcakes!  It's a good thing my momma wasn't there cause they were so good they made me want to slap her!

I stupidly left my camera at home but luckily, Allison brought hers.  So, all of these pictures have been stolen borrowed from her with permission.

Allison remembered to bring candles for our cupcakes.  Chris got the 9 since he's turning 29; I got the 8 for 28.  We had to improvise on the 2s.

Can you see the pins we're wearing?  Yeah, they light up, which is pretty awesome when you're cosmic bowling.

I made a good wish before digging in to my cupcake.

Since we had two lanes, we decided to split up into two groups:  Those Who Care About Bowling and Those Who Don't.  Coincidentally, the split also happened to be Boys and Girls.

The highest scorer of the night just so happened to be on this team:

Oh yea!  Way to go, Jenny!  (The rest of us were definitely NOT the high scorers.)

At least the other team was pretty cute.

My birthday twin and I stepped up to the lane at the same time.

Here's the thing about bowling:  I think it's a lot of fun.  At first.  But then things like my thumb and wrist start hurting.  Why do the balls have to be so dang heavy?  I try hard to put some oomf into my roll, but sometimes that means I nearly fall over once the ball is released.  No one else seemed to have that problem...

Allison had the great idea to take a picture of everyone anytime they bowled a strike.  I'm pleased to say my picture was taken more than once.  Funny story, though:  my right wrist was starting to hurt so I decided, The heck with it; I'm rolling with my left hand this time. And whaddaya know, that's when I got my first strike!

Here's a video Allison made with all the Strike pictures.

"Strike" A Pose

She has also written about our fun night on her blog, so head on over there to read it, too.

My birthday week got off to a great start with the bowling party.  Now, if only this soreness would go away.  (Fellow bowlers, y'all are all sore too, right?  Right?)