The Real Housewives of East Tennessee get crafty

There is this super cool website called Pinterest. Oh, you've heard of it? You and your mom and your dog all have Pinterest? I know. It's very fun. And a great way to waste some time, whether it is free time or not so free time. Pinterest is a place where you can store all your good ideas for pretty much anything and see other people's cool stuff as well. So a few of the Real Housewives and I decided to have a Pinterest Party where we brought one of those good ideas to life.

Let me just say, while I consider myself a creative person, I am not very crafty. First of all, my patience for crafting is pretty low. I expect instant gratification with crafts and that doesn't happen very often. (Flash backs to hot gluing ribbons on my wedding invitations and ironing hems on the pink toppers for the reception tables.) Second, I am slightly paranoid that my crafts look like something a talented preschooler could do. Despite this, I was excited to start this crafty goodness, so we gathered supplies and a bottle of wine and got our craft on.

We decided to make wreaths in the theme of our respective universities. I can't believe I was outnumbered by Missouri supporters. Basically, we took a 18 inch straw wreath form ($5 at Michael's) and covered it with yarn. Mine was covered in KU blue. Emily and Stephanie's were covered in black. Which could represent MU. Or death. (I'm sorry, the anti Mizzou jokes just flow from me.)

So we started wrapping our wreaths in yarn. It was at this point when I started doubting this craft. This is progress of about an hour.

But we persevered, watched a little Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and eventually got our wreaths covered. No one on Pinterest mentioned that it would take 3+ hours to cover the wreath in yarn. So I am mentioning it now: be warned!

After we got tired of yarn wrapping, we started making flowers to go on the wreath. The flowers are the fun, quick, and gratifying part of this process. Take a piece of felt (any size), cut it into a circle but make it kinda wavy. Then cut your circle into a spiral with a circle of fabric in the middle. Starting on the outside of the spiral, wind it into a lovely felt flower. If you wound it the right way, the circle will be at the base of the flower and you can use some hot glue to stick it all together. Perfection. You can't even mess these flowers up. It's kind of impossible. They all turn out different and cute. Like people. (Awww...)

At this point in the evening, it was like 9pm, which is totally my bedtime now. So we took a few photos of our progress and hit the road.

There is even documentation of the time, check out the clock in the background.

Emily is pretty cute for an MU grad!

The next day, Stephanie and I decided we needed to do something with the white letters. (Just wooden letters from Michael's, I think they were $2.50 each.) I thought about covering them in red yarn, but I was pretty much yarned out. So Steph got some Martha Stewart acrylic glitter paint. Which we quickly figured out was also time consuming since you have to paint layers and layers to get the color you want, waiting for the layers to dry in between. (See? I am not a good crafter. Not at all.)

I've been working the past few days, so I finished my wreath up this morning. Filled in some spots on the wreath with extra yarn, just hot glued the letters, and made a few extra flowers and hot glued those on as well.

Not horrible, right? And it goes with my KU wall. I am feel pretty darn crafty right now. Thankyouverymuch.

What you need to make your very own wreath:

*5 hours
*patience
*a long movie
*an 18 inch straw wreath form (leave the plastic on)
*a ball of yarn in your color choice
*felt in your colors of choice
*wooden letters
*paint for the letters
*a hot glue gun

So get your craft on this weekend! At least get your Pinterest on, because that is just good clean fun.

Caleb is working this morning and I am catching up on laundry and cleaning and blogging and wreathing. This afternoon we are heading to Nashville for the evening. Tomorrow Caleb gets to go to the Titans game and I get to hang out with my beautiful cousin, Nicole! Holla!