St. Patrick's Day Wreath

Today was a good day. My husband had his follow-up visit with the doctor who removed his thyroid and he gave him a clean bill of health. He also had an appointment for lab work because it's been a while and because they have to keep an eye on his thyroid producing hormones. He has an appointment for next week to go over those results, but that's with our regular doctor, not the specialist. Yesterday wasn't so good. I could hardly walk. My hips hurt so bad that I'm walking crooked! I can't get in to the doc until the first week of April, so I'll just keep keepin' on. Anyway, between feeling like doo-doo and doctor's appointments, I had no time to blog. And I missed it, too.

I went to the dollar store a couple of weeks ago and picked up some things to make a St. Paddy's wreath.

I got two packages of foam shamrocks, a wire garland and a pair of shoelaces. I spent $4, plus I used a piece of foam water line insulation we had left over from the motor home and some green fabric scraps.

I cut wedges out of the open edge of the insulation, so that it would bend nicely and not crimp. Then I removed the yellow plastic and adhered the two edges together. I used hot glue to glue the two ends together and wrapped the glued spot with duct tape, then wrapped the whole wreath with green fabric strips that I tore to give them a raggedy kind of edge. (Although, when I got done, they didn't even shoe, so it doesn't matter if you tear or cut.)

I forgot to take a photo before I started gluing everything on, and I'm sorry it's blurry. I just held it up and snapped a pic so you could see. After I had it all wrapped with fabric, I started gluing the shamrocks on. In each package, half were glittery and half were plain, so I did the first layer with the non-glittery ones, then went back with the glittery ones for the second layer.

Then I started wrapping the wire garland, and I'll tell you, this was kind of tricky. If you keep the garland rolled up, like it comes, it will make things so much easier! I let mine get away from me and I had to roll it back up again. Anyway, I had enough garland to go around the wreath 3 times plus make a few curly-cues.

I finished it by making a bow from the shoelaces, and I think it turned out pretty cute for $4 and a few on-hand supplies!