Hales & the Hacienda: A Welcome Wreath

Last year, our front porch was graced with hanging baskets:

Even with colorful flowers, the baskets just blended in...

Yup, it didn't really work with the house. So this year, we're rethinking the whole welcoming porch idea. Truly, the hanging baskets worked on our past few houses. Sigh.

What else can we do? Well, we could...

Have lots of pots with plants in them. Would look lovely, but would require the purchase of many pots. And would also require watering (not my strong point).

GardeningGoneWild.com: nice use of plants to "decorate" a hardscape

Add some accessories. Would also require the purchase of said accessories.

DecoratingForEvents.com: love the color - what a fun rug!

Add a wreath. Kinda satisfies the need for more plant material and adds another accessory.

From a farmer's market in NY:price unknown

Maybe I need to ask around and get some more ideas. But for today, the wreath won. Why? Because:

Wreath-making materials have been sitting around in my craft box for years. No cost involved.
There is also the benefit of using said craft materials, instead of letting them sit.
Wreaths are really lovely. In my neighborhood excursions, wreathed doors have been drawing my eye for the last month or so.

So a stick wreath was moved, by hand, to the upstairs table (stairs are really annoying after a morning of cleaning - up, down, up, down...). Along with a bag full of eucalyptus and some fake flowers. Yup, these are really old. Probably older than my oldest daughter, who is turning 12 this year.

The idea was to wrap the eucalyptus around the stick wreath, starting with this star of greenery.

Kinda looks like a weird spider.

Didn't work so well, since eucalyptus tends to break instead of bend (argh!). Then I thought about hot-gluing it to the wreath. Spent many, many minutes searching the house high and low for one of my two hot glue guns. This even required a trip to the dreaded room of my tween. Sad to say, the gun was never found. So, onto the next idea.

Which was: stick the @#$&! eucalyptus pieces into the stick wreath. This actually turned out to be very easy and fun. Even Jack joined in, and his pieces didn't need removing and replacing (there is some serious un-diagnosed OCD in my family, just so ya know).

Not too bad, if Jack and I say so ourselves

And just to top it off, I added a few white flowers so it wouldn't just blend into the door.

Not too sure about the white flowers once it's in place, though...too little?
Not needed? Hm.

The front door is now wreathed in glory. Or at least, eucalyptus. And it didn't cost me a cent! If you don't count what I paid for the materials over 10 years ago...although I'm pretty sure the total there might not even hit $5. These are the types of things I stock up on when they're on sale. Or used to stock up on, when I didn't have a crazy cache of craft materials.