oh no!

Wreath down, wreath down!

Actually, it was good timing b/c it was time to take everything down anyway, but it was still upsetting to come home from a late-night shopping run and see my gorgeous wreath blinking on the ground.

ho ho...

oh no! That's what I get for going out late at night.

Looks like the hook just came off the wall, and the drywall broke both where it hit the ground, and at the top from the shock of the impact. Boo. Guess the drywall wasn't quite up to making it through the season after all.

Looking at the bright side, at least this way I don't have to store it, unlike everything else we ended up with this year. And hey, next year I guess I can make a plywood one, and anchor a hook better.

last-minute coat storage

Every winter in our house has been become a constant struggle between organization and chaos. The coats, boots, and accessories just keep multiplying, but keeping the kids going in and out through the garage helps keep it somewhat controlled. The potential adding guests to that mess for a Christmas gathering had me wondering just what we could do to keep everything straight, especially if they’re coming in a different door. I ended up coming up with a pretty decent solution.

I’ve been wondering if I should buy a coat rack, but the idea of spending $30 on $5 of wood and hooks kind of galled me. So I scrounged around for some hooks and found a relatively straight piece of scrap to stain and sand. Then I just had to figure out where to mount it and how.

I love a good scrap project.

 

Stained, varnished, ready for hooks.

Technically I think these are tie hooks but the slider they were on isn’t attached in the closet, and they’re not really get a lot of use that way. So I can add them to the wood, and put any leftover on the door, and viola, tons more coat hangers.

Not the nicest looking but they did the job.

 

A few zip ties through some holes lined up and our temporary coat hangers worked wonders over the holidays, to the point where they're still up even if they don't look the nicest if you notice them from the back. Oh well, a little more organization never hurts.

Still needs a little something

When we got our first big snow of the season I realized the wreath still needed a little something. It looked okay when I tested the 3M hook, and it looks good when we leave for the day in the morning while the sun is still out, but looking at in the dark while I was shoveling this weekend it obviously needed lights to go with everything else we have up. 

And how do you add lights to a wreath with no outlets in sight and keep costs manageable? I had no idea, but thankfully Meijer delivered with some battery-powered lights on sale when we finally made it on the road to go grocery shopping. So for another $10 I picked up 2 50 light strands for the big wreath, along with another $5 for a smaller strand for the door wreath.

Sometimes it feels like the work never ends.

Even better, they’re battery powered but both have timers, so once you turn them on you can leave them alone and they turn off, then come back on 14 hours later. The 50-light strands use 3 C batteries, which makes for a chunky control unit but they did have a loop to attach it to something with. Easy to attach a screw to the wreath backing and leave these on all night now. And with that, I think this is finally finished.  

Better

So it looked much better when I was back out there later that day shoveling yet another dump of that fluffy white bullshit. Two big snows already this holiday season and I’m ready to skip to March. Woof. 

Ugh.

Need decorating ideas? Just add another tree.

I will admit I never saw myself putting up more than one Christmas tree in the same house. But I never really saw myself getting so much enjoyment out of building my own gigantic wreath either, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when stuff like this happens anymore. With the basement and fireplace basically done and relatives asking if we want their old trees, why the hell not? The fireplace is in good shape for stockings at least, and incredibly we had enough ornaments to basically do a second tree. So I guess Christmas morning is going to be in the basement from now on. At least I can still watch “A Christmas Story.”

Actually nicer looking than the one upstairs.

Of course we didn’t get just a tree, we also got a lighted mini tree that the boy instantly claimed as his, and a host of other lights, garlands, and old outdoor decorations. I could have used some of that two weeks ago but whatever. A co-worker randomly gave me an advent tree too, with ornaments for each day. The boy claimed that one too. Things are looking very festive around the house these days.

Although I am a little worried that this signals a trend for our house to become the dumping ground for stuff no one wants anymore. I’m okay throwing stuff out as necessary but I don’t want piles of everyone else’s crap taking up space in our garage in the meantime. The wife would say this is just my inner bah humbug coming out but as good as all this stuff looks right now, come Dec 26^th I’m going to have to start figuring out where to put it all.

Things are done the way they're done b/c that's the way they work.

There’s a skylight in our kitchen, along with a sliding door that exits onto our back deck. A bright, sunny kitchen was a HUGE selling point for us and the space is one of my favorite things about the house. That’s even after we realized two doors and a skylight letting in sun all morning easily added 10 degrees to the house’s temperature, especially once it really warmed up in the spring. When it got hot early this summer we put paper blackout shades over everything in desperation; that worked well enough to at least keep things live-able. It looked horrible and it was a pain every time you wanted to use the door to go outside, especially after we added a sheet for an extra layer, but it served its purpose. 

I finally reached a point this fall where I had had enough and got the okay to buy some cordless cellular shades to over the door. They do the same job and look much better doing it. But I had to remove some trim to get them onto the wall, and was wondering how to put it back up once I was done. I trimmed a section out so it would fit where it was originally, and thought I could glue it back on. Wrong.

Obviously a cut out if you know what you're looking at, but not the kind
of detailI pay huge attention to.

Needs some touch up paint, cover some nails, good to go.

After scrambling to keep things in place with glue and tape, I finally realized grabbing two finishing brads would be so much easier b/c that’s exactly what those nails are made for. A quick run back to the garage, and 90 seconds later things were on the wall for good and we were all done.

So much better. I should probably build a valance next.

That’s a long way to express exactly what I said in the title here, but trying to be cute and glue things on was the absolute wrong way to go. Finishing nails might mean having to cover them and do some paint touch up, but things are done that way b/c it works that way. A good lesson to learn, especially if I want to repeat the process on our basement sliding doors.

But will it hang?

Testing out the wreath’s hang this weekend reminded me of a bottle rocket I built in high school. Goofing around in shop class, I ended up building as big a nose cone for my soda bottle rocket as I could. I finished the basic shape with a few days to spare, so I kept adding layer after layer of masking tape until that thing was so heavy I was sure it would fail spectacularly once we tried to launch it. Of course, I hadn’t taken the added aerodynamics into account and it ended up setting the high mark for altitude for the class. I actually broke it off to let other people use it to get passing grades on their rockets. That was 20 years ago, but I guess it sets a pretty good precedent for my “what the hell, let’s try this” -approach succeeding beyond my wildest expectations sometimes. 

It was the weight more than anything that brought that experience to mind. Concerned about the drywall, I wrapped just about the entire frame in packing tape before putting the garland on. Four pieces of garland don’t weigh a lot on their own, but factor in the tape, scrap wood, staples, and ornaments and I think we’re probably well over 10 pounds for the entire thing. The 3M hook is rated at 7.5 lbs, so something might have to give here.

Nothing to do now but cross my fingers I guess.

Hey, that looks halfway decent.

But there’s a lip above the garage door the hook can rest on, and since I don’t think this needs to go anywhere I can slip in some glue to hopefully keep things on the wall. So far so good, although I did end up adding a longer wire to get the wreath hanging a little lower and adding a stabilizing piece of scrap so it was evenly away from the door. I think it looks great, now I just hope it holds up through all the weather we’re supposed to be getting!