After "I Do"

I know all of you married folks out there asked the same thing Derek and I did after we got home from our honeymoon.

"What do we do with all this stuff?!?!"

Our wedding was small, intimate, and very homemade.  Pretty perfect for us!  Since we did most of the decorating ourselves we had all of this STUFF left over and no clue what to do with it.

Here's a view of our aisle decorations....

 

We went to Hobby Lobby and found these awesome shepherd's hooks for about $8 a piece.  We only had four rows so we bought 8 hooks.  A friend of ours had 8 old mason jars she let us borrow.  If you need mason jars, you can easily get more than you can imagine at Wal-Mart, Target, Hobby Lobby, Michaels, or Old Time Pottery.  I've seen them everywhere for extremely cheap!

 

I bought one yard of plain burlap and cut 8 strips about 3 inches wide then just tied those strips around the jars.  Finally, Hobby Lobby has a fantastic dried flower section and always great bargains!  Derek and I are different and like different things so we bought three different kinds of flowers with differing heights that we placed in descending order. 

 

The wedding was perfect, reception was perfect, honeymoon in NYC was perfect.  Then we got home to a mess.....the wedding was at my parents' house so their garage was LOADED down with shepherd's hooks, mason jars, dried flowers, vases, etc etc etc!

 

Facebook is amazing for networking.  The city we live in has a page called "Give-Sell-Swap" where you can post things and, well, give, sell, or swap.  Seeing as I was never going to use 20 small vases again, I put them on facebook and sold them for a decent price!  The flowers were a different story...

 

I wanted to keep the flowers.  They were just too pretty to throw away and they smell amazing!  So, I made a wreath! 

 

First of all, I took an old Styrofoam wreath and cut it in half.  I now have two wreath "bodies" and it fits better in my door hanger!

Secondly, I wrapped the wreath with twine.  I have used twine before as a base and attempted to secure it with fabric glue.  That didn't work out too well.  This time, I cut multiple strips of the twine about 3 feet long a piece.  I wrapped the twine around the wreath then put hot glue throughout that section.  The glue not only held the twine to the wreath but it also connected each ring to itself.  

Thirdly, cut off the flowers till you have about a 3 inch stem or shorter. 

Finally, place your outside flowers onto the wreath.  Hot glue that stem bunch to the middle of the wreath.  Your stems will be in the middle and your flowers will spray out to cover the whole thing.  Continue to work your way to the middle of the wreath.  After you've done one half, do the same flower placement to the other side.

 

I didn't secure my flowers this way and I wish now I would have.  They would have looked neater and more organized if I would have. 

 

 

VIOLA!! I'm pretty proud of this little adventure!

 

 

Please feel free to leave me comments!  Have you been thinking about trying something out but need somebody else to try it first? I love a challenge! Send one my way!