Thoughts on Thursday

I have been looking through magazines this week, trying to find
ideas of craft projects for December. I like making new things
for my house in December and I have been looking at things
a person like me who is challenged and who knows
I am no Martha Stewart.



Every Christmas since I can remember I have tried to make things.
Even the first year we married I made the ornaments for the tree
and tied them with red ribbon.

One year on the cover of a magazine was this beautiful wreath. It was
one of the most incredible things I had ever seen before. I stared and stared
and read the directions over and over.
Finally I thought I can do this. Now I call having toddlers, life in reality.
I knew I couldn't make this beautiful wreath until they were all in bed.
When the babies were little they were not good sleepers.

I put all of the things I needed in a bag and then planned where my workspace
was going to be. I got the babies in bed and asleep and I was so tired by then,
but I was excited too.
This wreath used a Styrofoam base and fresh cranberries. Each cranberry was
individually pinned with small pins to the Styrofoam. Until the whole thing was
filled and then you took a great big satin ribbon and used that to hang it on your
door.

I worked and the cranberries were sticky, and juicy. Every time I stuck a pin
in juice went every where. The pins would stick to my fingers and juice
was running down my elbows. It was taking so long that the smell
of warm cranberries was starting to smell too ripe. Then the gnats started
arriving.
I was not going to be defeated, but the baby was waking up every hour
and it was very late so I thought, " I would go to bed and get up early in
the morning and finish and clean up the mess. I turned off the light
and went to bed.

I over slept the next morning and when my husband went in to where I had
been working he yelled (he never yells, ever) "What the heck is that
horrible smell!!!! "
I jumped out of bed, bleary eyed and ran in the laundry room where everything
had been, there was the smell of rotting fruit, molded cranberries and a room full
of gnats.

I just picked up the whole thing and took it to the trash. Even today I do not decorate
with real fruit, ever, well pumpkins but that is it.

Later I picked up the magazine and stared at the photograph. Then it dawned on
me, this wreath is somewhere it snows. Where it is cold. That was why it looks so
pretty the red against the white of the snow.

A very smart blogger has the directions over at her place and good instructions
if you want to try it. http://themagiconions.blogspot.com/2009/12/how-to-make-cranberry-wreath.html

I was thinking about it as I was planning my decorating this year. I still love
that wreath but I ain't gonna make it.

Have a wonderful Thursday,
~Kim~