Not quite a wreath reveal

I love going to Menards’ Christmas village. Well, I loved going by myself when I was younger and it reminded me of first seeing their commercials in college. It still has its moments now going with kids, but a lot of those moments involve trying to stop them from running around like crazy people, and convincing them to put very fragile things back very carefully. Our most recent trip was no different but it was still fun. 

I came home with five pieces of garland, among many, many other things. One 18” for $4 and four 9” for $4.50 each. Not bad. I was on the fence about getting that fifth piece, but the wife convinced me that extra would be better than having to make another trip. And still, even with a bow and a heavy duty outdoor 3M hook to put everything up we were still under 30 bucks for wreath materials. Not bad.

The cheap stuff was good for a bottom layer, stapled directly to the drywall. With two of the fuller garlands on this started to look pretty good, and I needed to switch to longer staples. I put the third on to round everything out, and although I could have crammed the fourth one on I think we can make better use of it somewhere else. But I was pretty pleased with how things filled out. 

Full enough, if a little asymmetrical.

The "red white and blue" theme was accidental.

With the bow on top and the extra ornaments I had around, this is actually pretty close to what I had in my head. A natural wreath of this size would be fuller but I don’t really want have to buy one each year, I’d rather make something artificial that can come back year after year. Part of the issue with a wreath of this size is keeping it wide enough to not look like a hula hoop, but thin enough that it’s still light enough to hang and keep its shape. I think I walked that line just about as closely as I could here. Now I just have to see if the 3M hook is up holding this, and I have a feeling I might have to put a longer wire on to hang it from. But for $30 I’ll take that.