A Winter Wreath

Where the heck did autumn go?

It's cold. Can't feel your fingers cold. And guess what. I still have a summer wreath on my back door. Yeah. While I was watching the snow in the air this morning, it dawned on me - perhaps it's time to retire the sunflower wreath.

But, since it's so cold - the kind of day you just want to curl up on the sofa, with a cup of coffee, and watch Long Island Medium re-runs (maybe that's just me?). I decided to at least take that summery wreath down. But once I took it down, I realized I wanted to get into the spirit of things. Sometimes that just happens. Just when I was getting my lazy on.

Ergo, the little man and I were on a mission. (Sometimes you've got to use a word like ergo, don't you think?) Okay, maybe this was my mission, but my guy's always game for heading outside. Especially for a pine cone gathering mission. Armed with our Wegman's bags, gloves and hats, we clomped out to the woods in our boots.

Half an hour later we had a bag full of pine cones (and dirt). Score!

As mentioned, the pine cones were dirty, and wet, from lying on the ground in the woods for centuries. So I put them on top of the heat registers around the house. Big A loves when I do this - when you step on them, it's almost exactly the same as stepping on a lego. After a few hours the heat dries out the pine cones, and makes them all nice and fluffy. If a pine cone can be fluffy.  (I know there are ways to dry pine cones and de-bugify them, but is all I did was stick them on the registers. I live on the edge.)

Once they were all dried, it was time for my evil plan...

I used a grapevine wreath, which I love on their own, so I decided to cover only part of the wreath. I wrapped a strip of burlap around the bottom 1/3 of the wreath, and glued the pine cones onto the burlap. Honestly, I didn't have a plan. Not even an evil one. I just glued them on with gay abandon. 

I glued some burlap bubbles, and bunches of burlap, just to fill in the spaces.

I tied a bunch of the tiny pine cones using some jute twine, and hung them down in the middle of the wreath.

Finally, to give the pine cones a little color, I brushed them with gold glitter paint. (Of course!)

And, voila! We're ready for the snow! Ok, maybe that's an exaggeration.

Linking to: Nifty Thrifty Things and Link It or Lump It