Weekend Chili and Wreath Making

This weekend kicked off with a chili competition with some friends followed closely by some wreath making, house cleaning, and uber organization (more on that in the next post).

As for the chili, I will tell you all that I did not win, sadly.

I worked an awesome recipe that used beer, chocolate, and bacon. Who doesn't love bacon?

Sadly I lost to someone who used beer, chocolate, bacon, and deer meat. Dang it! I need to use buffalo next time. I will not be outdone by lousy deer meat!

After licking my wounds, I decided to distract myself with a little wreath making.

I went to Joann's and purchased the supplies to make 2 very different wreaths.

Wreath #1: The Nursery / Hospital / Delivery Room Wreath

I had an awesome baby shower. I was lucky enough to receive a lot of gift bags stuffed full of a wide variety of tissue paper. One of the ladies at the shower clued me in to a wreath that can be made with all the tissue paper.... I decided to keep it and see what I could cook up.

The final result:

As I said, a lot of tissue paper in some amazing colors! 

The only part of this wreath that was not given to me at the baby shower, is the green foam form wreath that I bought at Joanns for $3.00.

This is what it looks like from the back....

I started with a huge bag of tissue paper collected from the shower. 

Then, I sorted and smoothed it down in a few different piles. I cut the paper along the middle seam, long ways. Then I cut the tissue paper into 5 x 7 squares, approximately.

I then twisted the papers in the middle of the sheet making little tissue flowers.

I placed the "flowers" into holes that filled I poked into the foam wreath with a screw driver and filled with hot glue.

After the tissue was placed all around the wreath, I used a pretty piece of ribbon that was wrapped around a box from my shower to make the loop to hang the wreath from. I made one tail quite a bit longer so I could use it to secure the glitter letter from a different box in the center.

I am quite happy with the final result!

Wreath #2:

I purchased the following:

I was inspired by a wreath made in West Virginia blue and yellow. However, as I have no affinity for any one particular sports team, I decided on teal and white.

Here is the final product....

I made the wreath by making loops with the burlap and securing it to the wreath form with pipe cleaners.

There are 3 loops of burlap.

The inner loop is the smallest, the middle loop is double that size, and the outer loop is 1.5 of the middle loop.

I then made the chevron striped bow and secured it to the wreath with pipe cleaners and added the blue flowers.

Bam! Two wreaths.