An "Egg"-Cellent Garland

    I pared down my Valentine's and St. Patty's decor, but when I unpacked my Easter things, I realized there was nothing to get rid of! I had some plastic eggs, a tray, a kitchen towel and a wreath. Period. That was it. I am loving having a fireplace for no other reason than that I adore hanging garlands! But I had no garland. I didn't really have anything!

   When I went to the store to find something, I realized why my decorations were so sparse. Everything is cheesy, or ugly, or ugly AND cheesy. So, I realized if I wanted anything new, I would have to come up with something.

  At Target, I was looking at Easter eggs and I saw something interesting: there are two small holes at the top and the bottom of the egg. Which meant only one thing (besides that they are not a suffocation hazard): they would be perfect for stringing! My idea was very simple: a bunch of eggs on a string. And it worked!

The supplies: does it get any simpler? I bought a bag of 48 eggs from Target, super deal, they were only $2! I already had the string (It is the "innards" from 550 cord, also called parachute cord. It is nylon so it was easy to put through the holes, I didn't even need a needle! You could also use embroidery floss.)

See the holes? Almost all plastic eggs come that way now, so it should be easy to find them anywhere.

I shoved the string through the bottom half, pulled it through and then through the top half.

Then snap the halves of the eggs back together. It truly is so simple even a child could do it. I didn't glue or tape the eggs in any way. They hold together just fine without anything.

 Simply keep repeating until your garland is the length you want. I didn't fuss with making sure that I used the same set of holes, and mine came out just fine. (Picture that if you are holding the egg horizontally there is are two set of holes: one on the top and one on the bottom- it doesn't matter if you put them in the upper holes on the bottom half and the lower holes on the upper half, it works out fine.)

If you were wondering how I hang my garlands, I use the 3M removable hooks. I have had these up since Christmas and they work so well. However, the hooks looked really bare. So I bought some ribbon at Hobby Lobby ($2) and made really simple bows. I just sort of stuck them on the hooks.

I didn't want it to be too explicitly "Easter" so I chose this geometric pattern. I figured the eggs were plenty Easter enough!

And there you have it! Now that I have discovered there are holes in the eggs, I think there are a lot of creative things you could do with them. You could hang them individually from the ceiling,  or make a swag with varying lengths of strings and ribbon.

I may try something different, because out of my 48 eggs, I had twenty left over! For right now they are looking festive in a white dish on my table.

I promise all my post won't be about seasonal decor, especially since I am running out of holidays for a while. I have been in a funk lately and I just really am trying to not stress about blogging (or lack thereof). For now, I hope my quick, simple projects appeal to you!

A Little St. Patty's Pretty

 I tried going simple with my Valentine's decorations, and that made me really happy. Still, I love to give a little nod to even the "not-so-important" holidays. My decor for March is St. Patty's, and it is even sparser than my V-Day stuff, but I still wanted to whip up a little wreath.

I had been wanting to try one of the yarn wrapped wreaths that I had seen in a multitude of places (my friend, Sarah, had made one, too.). I decided spur of the moment to do it one night. I was pleased to find that I have become crafty enough that I didn't even need to purchase anything! I had a styrofoam wreath (I don't recommend the kind I used, an extruded foam wreath like this one, would be much neater. That kind doesn't shed like my Goodwill find, however Hobby Lobby wasn't open at 9pm on Saturday when I decided to make this!) yarn, my trusty floral pins, and some felt, buttons and ribbons all on hand!

I started by wrapping yarn around my floral pin and shoving it in the wreath, at an angle so it wouldn't come through the front of the wreath. I left the end attached to the skein of yarn initially but later realized it was too much of a pain to try to move that whole thing around the wreath. I ended up pulling out a big wad and working in sections.

One thing I decided to do was wrap a shorter amount of yarn in sections around the wreath. Because of the type of styrofoam I was working with, I couldn't slide the yarn to fill gaps. Having those pieces that weren't part of the later strands gave me something that I could move a little.

I didn't worry about how the back looked. I concentrated on the front, so the back definitely had gaps. That is something else that I am sure would not have happened on extruded foam, it would have been easy to slide the yarn, since the surface is smooth. However, it didn't affect the final product. When I would reach the end of a piece of yarn , I would wrap it around another floral pin and shove it in.

It only took me about an hour to wrap the whole thing, My wreath was about 12 inches, and I wasn't aiming for perfection. I am sure if you were more precise, or had a larger wreath, it would take longer.

My plain brown wreath needed a little "something" to make it feel St. Patty's and actually, these clovers, from Pinterest, inspired the whole thing. The blogger made barrettes with her clovers, but I spruced mine up by sewing a button in the middle and attaching them to my wreath (with floral pins, of course).

I turned a little ribbon into a bow, and added it. I decided to leave it at that! This is another wreath, like my burlap one, that will easily transition to a different season. Because I didn't hot glue anything it will be a snap to remove the clovers and replace them with other seasonal accents. But for now, I am really liking the bit o' green it is bringing to my front door!