Guinea Pigs and DIY Wreaths- The Dark Side of the Holidays

We didn’t have room in our apartment for a Christmas tree this year.  It kind of broke my heart.  One of my most favorite things about Christmas is having a tree- the smell, the warm glow of the multi-colored lights in the darkened living room on a cold winter evening, the sounds of cats choking on, and then throwing up, tinsel in the middle of the night with that deep throated “Hhhheeee, Hhhheeee” sound.

To scale down our holiday this year to the miniscule size of our apartment I decided to put up a wreath instead of a tree.  It will make less mess than a tree (I hate all those needles that the tree leaves on the floor from the moment you bring it into the house until you drag its dried, dead body out to the curb on Valentine’s day).  It would also be hung conveniently out of reach of our entranced felines (shiny. must. eat.), making for fewer late night wake-up calls and careful, moonlit tip-toes through the living room in an attempt to find the shiny vomit pile before it finds you (Inevitably the vomit pile is exactly one step in front of the light-switch, every time.  And I step in it, every time.)

Instead of buying a wreath at the store I decided to make my own.  I thought I was being frugal (some wreaths cost $20 or more!) and crafty (I have a glue gun and working fingers, AND I made that one thing I saw on Pinterest that one time, how hard could it be?).  I searched the internet and Pinterest for a wreath tutorial but most tutorials were for wreaths made out of fake flowers.  Faux floral arrangements always remind me of old folks homes, Chinese food restaurants, and REALLY cheap dates (“They’ll last forever” he said… which meant that we did not).  I got the general idea of how to make a wreath from the online tutorials and headed out to the store to get some supplies.

On my way to the store- that’s where the tutorial picks up.  If you want to follow along and learn how to make a holiday wreath, get out your keys and get ready.  I now present:

My 4 step tutorial for making a quick and easy, fresh, holiday wreath.

Step 1- Proceed to store that sells wreaths.

Step 2- Purchase wreath.

Step 3- Display wreath.

Step 4- Waste additional 4-5  hours that you saved not making your own wreath from some bullshit “quick and easy” tutorial (because they’re NEVER really quick and easy).  Do something shameless like get a pedicure, practice your twerking, or have some vodka shots.

The above tutorial is not what you expected?  It’s not what I expected to pass along to you, but trust me, it’s definitely the best way of doing it.  If you think you’re craftier than me or that your holiday spirit will carry you through the wreath making process… if you really want to persevere with making your own fresh, holiday wreath I have another tutorial for you.  The tutorial below lists the steps that I actually followed when making my wreath.  This tutorial starts at the same spot the last tutorial started.  We’re on our way to the store for supplies- get out your keys and get ready.  I now present:

My 20 step tutorial for making a holiday wreath, almost losing your husband, causing a cat miscarriage, mutilating your hands, and eventually realizing that Canadian children make the best fresh holiday wreaths.

Step 1- See vendor running pop-up Christmas tree market at the major intersection just 3 miles from your house.  Realize that to sell wreaths like that for just $16 he’s most likely importing greenery from Canada, using child labor to build them, and using all of the profits from his fly-by-night operation to fund an underground guinea pig fighting ring in Nashua.

Step 2- Drive through intersection (for added flair give wreath/tree seller the finger).  You’re doing the world, the children, and the guinea pigs a huge favor AND you can make a way better wreath than that with your adult sized hands.  (This, of course, is a fact that you have to believe 100% to undertake and actually complete this project.  It’s not true.  Not at all.  In fact, you should buy the imported Canadian sweatshop wreath.  Once he cuts all of the branches off of the tree limbs for the wreaths I’m sure he’s sending the limbs through a wood-chipper to turn them into pine shavings.  Shavings that his prize fighting guinea pigs will then use for bedding… it’s really an environmentally friendly operation.)

Step 3- Shopping for supplies.  Since I really had no idea what I needed I just accosted a somewhat elderly looking woman in the floral department at the craft store that looked like she knew what she was doing.  I walked up to her as she pulled out stalks of dried red berries and hideous glittering holly leaves, eyeing each one and mentally building the most atrocious arrangement for the centerpiece at her old folks home holiday dinner.  I went for flattery and said “You look like you know what you’re doing back here in dried florals…”.  Her cheeks blushed the color of the plastic poinsettia held in her left hand and she said “I dabble a little bit… for a couple of years…”

I told her my tale of woe- No tree, Tiny Tim the littlest guinea pig…  She took me under her wing, walking me step by step through the wreath making process and the aisles at the Michael’s Arts and Crafts store.  When I had all of the supplies and sage advice that I could carry she waved her glittering holly branch over me like the fairy godmother of florals.  I felt like Cinderella heading off to the ball… unfortunately the only place I was going was the cash register (at least I had a coupon!).

Based on the advice that I received I purchased:

Wreath frame– I chose an 18” frame, only because they were out of the 21” frame.  In retrospect I should have gone for the 12 incher and just made a bigger, gaudier bow.

Spool of fine gauge green wire– it doesn’t look like barbed wire at the store but once you get home and start using it you’ll realize that’s what it is. 

Ribbon to make a bow– I chose a lovely ‘ho ho ho’ pattern.  Spend lots of time on this step.  Picking this out is the most fun part of the wreath making process. Oh and I recommend getting something red so you won’t see any blood stains on it. 

Decorations- I got some red and green miniature Christmas balls. 

Total spent $7.85 (I knew that guy on the corner was ripping people off! Kudos to me for saving $8.15)

Step 4- Have a snack.  Seriously, that trip to the craft store was exhausting and it made me hungry.  I couldn’t believe that old lady didn’t have any snacks in her purse… isn’t it some kind of law that once you hit 70 you are required to carry hard candies with you at all times (butterscotch, lemon drops, something).  She seemed offended when I asked so maybe she was just a hurt looking 67?  I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and not report her to the authorities.

Step 5- Procure implements for harvesting greenery– A pair of pruning shears will probably do.  If your pruning shears are buried somewhere in the garage in a pile of stuff that you haven’t unpacked since you moved 3 months ago (it’s winter, I won’t need those until spring…) you can always get out a handsaw that is WAY too big for the size branches you will be collecting and you can also use the pair of ‘utility shears’ your husband keeps on his workbench.  The ones you’ve been told not to borrow because you never put them back in the right place, or when you do put them back in the right place they’re dull because you’ve used them to cut through something like tin cans or old tires.

Step 6- Bundle Up.   My floral godmother told me to collect ‘a lot’ of fresh greenery.  She really tried to stress ‘a lot’, in fact she seemed winded by the effort of it… maybe she was a smoker, could explain her looking prematurely old.  I took her very seriously and got ready for a big expedition into the woods behind my house.  I went for long johns (top and bottom), ridiculously big knee socks that I had left over from my roller derby days, jeans, sweater, scarf, down jacket, hat with ear flaps, and gloves.

Step 7- Pack a snack.  You could get lost in the woods and be out there for more than 45 minutes without help or nourishment.  At least grab a granola bar.

Step 8-  Leave your husband this note. After all he’s expected home in about 5 minutes and you want him to know where you are and what you are doing.

My husband didn’t come and find me in the woods.  He didn’t get home until about 10 minutes after I came back into the house.  He was 30 minutes late getting home from work that day.  He says that he was ‘working late’.  I was immediately suspicious because he never works late.

I am almost certain that he came home, found the note and decided that either New Hampshire had finally gotten to me and I was waiting in the woods to ambush him with the saw (in which case I wouldn’t say anything about the saw in the note… duh!) or that he’d finally had enough of my peculiar behavior and that here was his chance to make a clean break.

My guess is that he got half way to the airport when he remembered that he left his cat and his favorite utility shears back at the apartment.  He sped back, cursing the whole way, and unfortunately found me back in the apartment (at least I was sans saw) foiling his getaway.

The only reasons my husband came back.

Step 9- Go outside and collect branches. Get the small, full looking branches.  Avoid sap and spilling snow down the back of your jacket.

Step 10- Dry branches.  Shake snow from branches and bring them in your house.  Lay out a number of old towels on your kitchen floor and put snowy, soggy branches in a single layer on top.  At this point you might think a really good way to remove excess moisture from the branches is to put another towel on top of the branches and then dance around on top of it in a RiverDance fashion while singing that Christmas Carol… the one where the only words you know are ‘Pa-Rum-Pum-Pum-Pum’.  I wouldn’t recommend this for 2 reasons.

1-      I think this is why all of the needles started falling off of my wreath only days after I made it and

2-      If your husband, who is already questioning your sanity because of a note involving a saw, returns home at that moment…  it’s probably not going to help you any. 

Fresh Greens

Step 11- Have another snack.  All of that branch collecting and dancing burned a lot of calories.  I went for a full dinner at this point.  It was a little difficult to get in there and cook with all the branches on the floor but since I was cooking my specialty (spaghetti) there wasn’t too much kitchen time or prep work involved.

During this step you’ll also have to keep your cats out of the kitchen so they don’t eat the fresh greenery.  I tried to use scare tactics by telling Willi and Animal that eating pine needles causes miscarriage in goats (I knew that Master’s degree would come in handy for something).  My ominous warnings prompted only disinterested stares from the other side of the kitchen.  My spayed, ovary free felines then chomped their way through an entire branch before retiring, pine fresh, back to the sofa for the rest of the evening.

Step 12- Clip 6-8” pieces of greenery off branches (the utility shears work really well for this step).  Tightly wrap 5 or 6 of these pieces together into a bundle using 6” pieces of fine gauge green wire.

Bundle

Step 13- Repeat Step 12 until you have enough bundles to cover your wreath frame.  Approximately 30-35 bundles will cover an 18” frame.  You’ll know when you’re about done because your hands will start to look like Bruce Willis’ feet in the original Die Hard movie (why was he barefoot? who takes off their shoes at a fancy Christmas party?).  Like John McClane you must persist… I’d hate for Hans Gruber to get you.

Bundles and Bundles of Bundles!

Step 14- It’s been at least an hour since Step 11 when you last consumed food.  Normally I would say we’re due for a snack break but the condition of my hands totally made me lose my appetite.  If you can eat something at this point, do, we still have a ways to go.

Step 15- Wrap bundles onto wreath frame.  Lay 1^st bundle on frame, wrap tightly onto frame using 6” of fine gauge green wire, twist the end of the wire into bundle on the back of the frame.  This serves the dual purpose of keeping the wire from scratching your doorframe (or your clothes and eyeballs) and helps to make deeper puncture wounds in your hands than you were able to sustain with the wrapping in Step 13 alone.  Work backwards from the 1^st bundle, slightly overlapping each bundle to cover the end of the previous bundle and create a nice full wreath.

Wrapping onto frame.

Step 16- Your hands will now look like they’ve been put through a meat grinder.  We might as well cauterize the wounds… it’s time to get out your glue gun.  In this step we’ll make a bow for your wreath.  I had no idea what I was doing so I decided to try and find a tutorial online for making a wreath bow.  These are also bullshit.  I ended up with something that looked like it was made by a kindergartner on ‘Learn to Tie Your Shoes’ day.  In the end I cut some long pieces of ribbon and wrapped them in a bow-type fashion, using lots of hot glue to both secure the layers together and further deform my hands with second degree burns.

I didn’t realize that half of the ho-ho-ho’s were upside down until after I glued it on. Oh well…

Step 17- Once your ‘bow’ is completed you can either wire it onto your wreath frame using a long piece of the green wrapping wire or you can glue it down with your glue gun.  I chose the less painful of the 2 evils.  Having limited muscle control left in both mangled hands I squeezed out a quantity of hot glue roughly equivalent to the magma flow generated in the 79 A.D. eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.  I laid the wreath down on my kitchen floor and pushed the bow down onto the glue.

Step 18- Walk away to let the glue cure.  Sit on the sofa.  Encourage your cats to go and eat more pine needles.  There are needles everywhere, it looks like a pine tree fell over in your kitchen at this point.  I’m gonna go with word from Ke$ha and yell “TIMBER!”. The more the cats eat, the less you’ll have to clean up.   Cats are suddenly, mysteriously, disinterested in pine needle consumption.

Step 19- Lift wreath off kitchen floor… if you can.  Given the condition of your hands you might not be able to lift anything.  In my case it wasn’t just the burns and cuts causing the problem… turns out I used a little too much glue and it ran through the pine needles onto the kitchen floor.  I thought briefly about displaying the wreath right there in the middle of the kitchen floor but then thought I better peel it up since it might be a hazard if it gets between me and food at the wrong time.  Lucky for me the glue didn’t melt the linoleum… phew (rental)!

Step 20- Hang wreath in its chosen place of honor.  Add decorations.

At this point your wreath is finished and the tutorial ends.  However, I’d like to also pass along some additional advice.  You should probably:

Wash your hands right away (it’s going to hurt).  Apply a generous amount of antibacterial ointment, then maybe cover your hands with some gloves to seal it all in.  Oh, work gloves…. that would have been a good idea somewhere around Step 12!

Leave the giant mess in your kitchen.  You’ll get it tomorrow… or the cats will get it… or your magical floral-y godmother will come and clean it up in the night.  I thought the latter was what happened in my kitchen but I think my husband said something about cleaning up a big mess when he was asking me, once again, where his utility shears were.

Get a tetanus shot. Just in case.

It turns out that my wreath came out pretty well.  Nonetheless, I’m thinking that next year I’ll pay the extra $8.15 to support the Canadian children’s fund.

It also turns out that my husband wasn’t working late after all, nor was he headed to the airport.  He was doing Christmas tree reconnaissance.  He knew how upset I was about not having a tree and he went to the pop-up vendor and looked at trees that night after work.  On the eve of Christmas Eve I came home and found this beautiful, little, Canadian tree smashed into the corner of our bedroom.  I hope our tree purchase will fund the career of Nashua’s next superstar fighting guinea pig, in my mind he is named John McClane.

That’s not my husband. Drawing challenge, Part I.

One night in early November while we were sitting watching TV I told my husband that I was going to draw him.  I’m not sure why I thought this was a good idea, it just sounded like fun.  I sat next to him on the sofa and spent about 20 minutes drawing him in profile.  The result of my effort is shown below. 

Oh, go ahead and laugh… we did.  If you aren’t laughing it must mean that you don’t know what my husband actually looks like.  He looks something like this but nothing like this at the same time.  If I was a police sketch artist and my husband had commited a crime they’d likely never catch him.

2 days later I decided to try again, certain that I could get it right if I just drew him from another angle.  I drew a close-up Fred, which became known as fat-face Fred.  Another 2 days, another fat-face Fred.  Another 2 days, Picasso Fred.  Another 2 days, another Day1 Fred, thought with a slightly smaller forehead.  I took some time off and waited 10 days before drawing him again… practice was not making perfect.  I plan on publishing these drawings in a later posting titled “Ways to alienate your spouse”.

Actually, I was hoping to improve my drawing skills and post the 5 original drawings with 5 amazing likenesses of my husband. So, to hone my drawing skills I am participating in a 30 day Drawing Challenge.  I found the Challenge online- it lists a theme or item for you to draw each day for 30 days.  The Challenge is supposed to enhance your drawing ability by giving you subjects that you wouldn’t normally choose to draw and making you attempt drawing them.

If I had to pick the thing that I am worst at drawing, it’s definitely people.  I can draw a decent looking animal, or inanimate object but if it has a human face I’m in trouble. That’s why it was so appropriate that the Challenge started off on Day 1 with a Self Portrait.

Day1, Self Portrait- Fred watched me as I held the hand mirror, stared into it, and tentatively put pencil onto paper.  I honestly tried to draw myself but this looks nothing like me and more like Dorothy when the flying monkeys took flight.

I didn’t want to draw freckles on my face because I didn’t know how to draw them without making myself look like an extra in a really bad live action version of 101 Dalmatians… thought I suppose if that happened I could just add some wrinkles and it would be a star from a really bad live action version of 101 Dalmatians– Glenn Close.

I clearly think better of my ears and my eyebrows than the reality that is attached to my head.  I shudder to think of what my actual self-portrait would look like.  Maybe after the 30 day challenge is over I’ll be able to draw a better Fred and a ‘better’ Mel?

Day2, Cloud- I went for dark creepy Halloween moon with clouds.  I remembered the advice of the teacher in my community education drawing class to cover the whole canvas in pencil and then erase out the clouds (sadly, although he reminded me a lot of Bob Ross -pot smell, hippie attitude- he didn’t have any other advice about happy little clouds… or a white dude afro).

Day3, Favorite Plant- Was there any other choice for this category than the Truffula Tree? I had to dig through my garage to find my colored pencils because Truffula trees need color! The joy of the trees possibly couldn’t be contained by the small square that I intended to draw them in and busted out into the space for the Day4 drawing.

Day4, Something Blue-. I think my Ornithology instructor would be proud of the wing structure that I recreated here… proof that I did something besides flirt with my future husband (who I met in the back of the ornithology van on our first bird-watching field trip) during class.

Day5, Something you don’t like- I hate wearing a watch.  I just hate the hassle of knowing what time it is and having to follow the rules that go along with knowing what time it is…. like being on time for things that aren’t food related (because I’ll always show up on time, and sometimes early, if there is a promise of something delicious).   It actually took me a while to find this watch and I was impressed to see that it was still set to the right time… in Bozeman, not including the adjustment I didn’t make for Daylight Savings time 4 years ago.  Must be a good battery.

Day6, Favorite Movie- My ABSOLUTE favorite movie of all time is The Sound of Music but I couldn’t bear to disgrace Captain Von Trapp and Frauline Maria by attempting to draw them with my previously exhibited people drawing skills.  They’d probably end up looking like Boris and Natasha from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons.  So I drew my second favorite movie Despicable Me.  I imagined my minion was thinking about ice cream.  GELATOOOO!

Day7, Something from a High angle- I laid my bicycle down on the ground and drew the seat while sitting on the sofa, instead of riding my bike (laziness).  I had been thinking about my bike seat a lot lately… not because I fell off of my bike in the living room (That was actually a couple of days later.  The bolt came loose on my bike trainer and I, still being clipped into my bike, fell sideways to the floor with my bike attached.  As I lay on the floor laughing at myself and thinking how funny that would have been to catch on camera for America’s Funniest Home Videos (I think this show is actually still on) I happened to look up.  There was the side of the fridge… 3 inches away.  I’m lucky Fred didn’t come home to find me lying on the floor in a pool of blood with a fridge/head concussion… or worse yet, come home to find me with a fridge/head concussion lying on the floor in a pool of blood AND melted ice cream if the impact had knocked open the freezer door- that would have been far worse), but because my butt really hurt from riding my bike over the last couple of weeks.

I thought my seat would look much more like a razor sharp torture device but after taking a detailed look at it while doing this drawing I realized that it really wasn’t that bad for a bike seat (as a tractor seat it would be just terrible, but as a bike seat it’s probably pretty standard issue).  I recognized then that the pain problem may be caused more by my butt… or my lack of butt.  So I went to the store and tried on some of those biking shorts to add a little junk to my trunk.

I poured my body into three different pairs of spandex shorts, stretching and pulling as hard as I could to get them up and over my hips (because my hips got all of the butt that didn’t quite make it around back…  these shorts made my hips feel like they needed their own ‘wide load’ sign).  I sidled out of the dressing room sideways (because there was no way I’d make it through head on with those hips!) and walked around the store like a cowboy in an old spaghetti western.  I was completely unable to close my legs because of the giant pad between them.  I felt like I was wearing an adult diaper, or one of those gargantuan maxi-pads that they give you in 6^th grade at the ‘Your First Period’ assembly.

In the end I opted to keep my $79.00 and to just get rid of the nerves in my butt one training ride at a time. (Obviously somebody wears these things…. Do you? How are they comfortable? If the pad was uncomfortable while walking I can’t even imagine what happens when you sit down on a bike seat.  If you’re in the know please explain.)

Day8, Something from a Low angle- Lassoed the moon and the stars and pull that rope tight…

Day9, Someone you love- I was going to draw Mr. Peanut (who doesn’t love Mr. Peanut) but then I remembered that this was a 30 day drawing CHALLENGE and that part of the challenge was to draw things that aren’t easy for me to draw.

I thought it would be a bad idea to draw Fred again because then my first drawing after the Challenge wouldn’t be like the big reveal on a makeover show… at least I hope that’s how it’s going to be *gulp*.  I decided to draw my dad because he smiles a lot and has glasses and if the drawing didn’t end up looking like him… it might just end up looking kind of like Mr. Peanut. Win. Win.  I think it came out okay… if you’ve never met my dad you probably won’t recognize him from this drawing but at least you won’t walk up to Mr. Peanut and call him Mr. Cheeseman (that would be embarrassing).

Day10, Favorite fairy tale- I really like The Princess and the Pea because it teaches us the valuable lesson that if we complain about things it will be assumed that we are royalty and should be treated thus… and because Fred is constantly calling me ‘the princess’ because of my insomnia.  I don’t sleep well and I always think it’s something, besides my insomnia, making me stay up for half the night. I’ve complained about cats in the bed, the little green light on the smoke detector, that I’m too hot, that I’m too cold, that I’m hungry, that I need a bigger pillow, that I need a smaller pillow, that we need a new mattress, that there is a killer in our house (mostly I thought this for the 2 months after Fred made me watch that horrific movie Mr. Brooks, the one with Kevin Costner, but sometimes I still wake up afraid we’re going to be one of his thrill kills and that we’ll be incinerated in his pottery kiln without anyone knowing what really happened to us… so if we go missing, this is most likely what happened), the noise that the heater makes when it comes on, the noises from outside when the windows are open, and even the noise of Fred breathing (which he promised to try and stop doing but hasn’t managed it yet).

To avoid having to draw a person again I thought about drawing a big stack of mattresses with a pea plant growing underneath the bed.  But then I decided to challenge myself and give it a try.  I nailed it on the pea (because I know whatever it is that’s bothering me when I’m sleeping feels like that BIG of a problem) but there is definitely something wrong with that princess.  She looks like she got steamrolled by the pea and her flattened body got stuck on there.  Oh well…

Day11, Favorite animal- That’s my dog Remmie, or what my dog Remmie would look like if he would sit still, which he doesn’t, even when you insist that he do so in the mean mom voice.

Day12, Something green- I love sea turtles.  We saw a ton of them when we went to the Big Island.  This one kind of looks like The Grinch. The Grinch is also green… either way, it counts.

Day13, Something you miss- Oh, Bozeman. Somebody please tell me it’s -25^o there again and I’ll feel better about leaving.

Day14, Favorite book- Every since 2nd grade when Mrs. Barbagello read Charlotte’s Web aloud to us I have loved me a talking pig and spider duo.  Although I have to admit that the character I most relate to is Templeton the rat when they go to the Fair.  I dream about the gluttony of fair food all year long.

Day15, Just a doodle- I wasn’t really sure what the definition of a doodle was (beside a ridiculously cute or ridiculously ugly dog.  Have you ever noticed that? There’s really no gray area with doodles… they can be the most adorable thing you’ve ever seen or they can look like a hideous rat-faced science experiment gone wrong).

I was going to draw a desert and a horse with no name.  After I drew the desert, with the blazing hot sun and the horse, I couldn’t figure out how to ‘not name’ the horse in my doodle.  Lacking a witty caption I decided to draw a cow spot over the saddle on the horse with no name, put in a barn and an extra cow and just make it a super-sunny Wisconsin afternoon.

 

So that is the result of 15 days of my Drawing Challenge.  I’m not certain that my skills have improved very much… just ask the flat princess that looks like she’s one of those villains from the original Superman movie that got trapped in that pane of glass and sent out into space.

I hope that the next 15 days, which include drawings of a:

Mythical creature

Bad habit- which I might just ‘accidentally’ read as a bad Hobbit

Childhood memory- this ought to be good, having been in my head it’s already warped and likely to get more so when I try to draw it

will help my drawing skills, allowing me to draw my husband in a non-offensive manner in January.  I don’t even think it really has to look like him… just as long as it doesn’t look like a 9/11 terrorist wanted poster I think he’ll be happy.