DIY Tied Wreath

Our neighbor is a Michigan fan, and every year, he hangs a flag off his front door (and every year, Andy crosses the street to go around his house on our walks). Our neighbor is probably pretty nice (we don't know him very well), but football rivalry blood runs deep in my husband's veins, so sometimes, he takes drastic measures. To show our Buckeye pride, I wanted to make a Buckeye wreath. Normally, Pinterest is my go-to DIY site. However, all of my wreath pins led to Etsy sites where I could buy a wreath for $XX plus shipping, or were dead ends (Oh, 404 Error, how I loathe thee!).

Fine. If Pinterest wasn't going to play nice, I'd wing it.

Ingredients:
3 yds of fabric, your choice of colors. I went with red, dark grey, and light grey
1 foam wreath form
pinking shears
swag

1) I'm not big measure-r, so I just started cutting approximately 1-2" strips of fabric and eyeballed the length. I wrapped the first one I cut around the wreath to see what it would look like. Cut to your desired length.

(I'm a naughty crafter and didn't even iron the fabric)

2) Tie strips around wreath form however you want. I'm a bit OCD about patterns, so I went red, light, dark. I thought about doing "rows" of colors, but Andy liked them all mixed together.

3) You can have the knots point any direction you want for different effects.

(Knots facing up, with a few turned back so I can glue something nifty to the corner)

(Knots facing out)

4) I added my Buckeye necklace to the wreath and attached them. (I also bought wooden letters O,S, and U, but thought they took up too much room.)

In the Misty Morning Fog

Who knew that I'd be thinking of Van Morrison at 6:30 this morning? (Actually, it would have been 7:30 if not for Daylight Savings Time, but since babies don't usually get that memo, we were up "early.")

It had been a fairly cold night last night, and the sun was ready to start burning up the fog. It was so pretty, I grabbed my camera and took a few pics while Hayden was playing with blocks.

You can literally see the steam rising off of the fence and our neighbor's lawn.

The Return of the Queen

I love fall. I've eaten about three bags of candy corn so far, and it's not even November. I have a bag and a half waiting for me in the cupboard, too. I'm mad I can't find my Halloween decorations, but I'm not willing to brave the spare room in search of them. (As much as I love Halloween and all things scary, I HATE HATE HATE spiders.)

I got a new job. I'm a Suicide Prevention Coordinator. No, I do not take phone calls from people who are suicidal. No, I do not do counseling. My job is to educate, advocate, and something else I forget. But anyway, I like it so far. My schedule is flexible, I get to dip my toes in teaching now and then, and my coworkers are pretty cool.

In my next post, I'll put up some pictures I took of downtown Ne'rk. Sarah and I had a photo shoot and it was fabulous.

Oh, and I've reached 19,000 words in the novel I am working on. My goal is 50,000 by the end of October, but I am being flexible with that deadline, because I do not want to exhaust myself before NaNoWriMo. I'm already cooking up some ideas for November. The only thing I am not looking forward to about NaNo, is that I will be out of town the first week of November, which is going to mess with my schedule a bit. On the bright side, I will be in Mexico. So I'm not complaining in the least.