What You See is Not What You Get

It was with great eagerness this year that I packed away the Christmas decorations. I don't know what it was about them, usually I'm sad to see them go, but this year they were closing in on me. Maybe it's that they're the same every year, maybe it's that they really clutter things up (not that we aren't typically covered in clutter anyway), who knows, but they were driving me nuts and New Years Day they were gone.

So, of course, the next day my five year old came to me and wanted to know when we'd be getting the "winter decorations" out. Apparently she loves a good decorating jaunt. "We're not" sounded a bit too grumpy of an answer, so I told her we didn't have any "winter decorations" per se. Smart cookie that she is, she proposed that we make some. So we did. Well, at least one.

I did some googling and flickring to see what I could see, and finally decided that we'd make a coffee filter wreath. This fit the bill because A. I liked the looks of it B. Little people could help and C. I had the materials on hand. They are simply, coffee filters (a bunch) - we used the basket shaped - I'm not sure if the conical ones would give the same effect, hot glue and a wreath form. If you don't have a wreath form, improvise - a wreath shape cut out of cardboard or foam core would work as well.

I watched this Martha Stewart video to get the gist of it, but rest assured there's not much to "get". Simply take two coffee filters, one on top of the other, fold them in half and then make sort of an ice cream cone shape out of the half circle. Fuss with it till you've got a shape you like, and open the layers up to make it fuller.

Fold the tip of the ice cream cone up, about 1/2" and flatten that out so you have a flat area to glue to your base. I glued a row opening outwards and then glued a second row opening towards the center of the wreath (tips pointing in the opposite direction of the first row). This made the wreath nice and full and sturdy.

And there you go, our winter decoration. I stuck the bow in (which could stand to be bigger) with a T-Pin and hung it with ribbon that's also secured with T-Pins. The beauty of that - come Valentine's Day, the ribbon can turn red or pink, come Easter it can turn spring green or light blue, come fall it could be black or orange. You get the idea.

Yes, the five year old did lose interested before it was all done and yes, she did break my glue gun while sitting right next to me (it wasn't on), but she's still happy with the results and so am I. Now I've got lots of other ideas on how to vary this - coloring the filters, glittering the filters, heart shaped forms, embellishing the wreaths, etc. Goodness knows, I need a few more craft ideas for my spare time!