homemade mother's day gifts!

I've been excited to share about another wreath that we made (we actually made 3 of them!) I think I'm becoming a little more crafty.  My parents came in town this past weekend and my mom told me about some sewing that she is doing- and it made me wish I would have paid more attention in 7th-8th grade home-ec class.  Maybe I will adventure into the sewing world someday.  

But back to the wreath.  I saw this on a blog over 6 months ago and absolutely loved it.  It's simple and very cost efficient to make.....and it's an acorn wreath.  I know, sounds dumb, but it looks so lovely!

Here is the tutorial that I found on http://www.dana-made-it.com/2008/07/tutorial-acorn-wreath.html

and some pictures of her wreath.

the original acorns

updated with some white spray paint

and you can re-paint it as many times as you'd like to match the season

Well April isn't really a popular month to find acorns and I'm not patient enough to wait until the fall- so I needed another alternative...and found that you can make the same wreath out of lima beans.  While you now have the added cost of buying the beans, you take out the process of searching for acorns and baking them to get rid of all the critters that come with them.  An acorn wreath is still on the fall to-do list though. 

I followed http://www.allthingsthrifty.com/2010/01/tutorial-lima-bean-wreath.html for my acorn wreath tutorial.  This was my picture guide for what an end product could look like:

We got to work on our lima bean wreaths.  We planned to make one for our balcony door and then one for each mom for Mother's Day.  Like I said in the caption above, I love that you can spray paint it again and change colors/ribbons and have something that is very seasonal.  So for our moms, we made white ones with a light seagreen ribbon.  And for ours, we made a light blue wreath with some black ribbon that we had leftover from wedding projects.  Though I don't have a nice wood or dark door, it looks pretty good hanging out on our pinkish balcony door.  Here is the finished project:

And a few more pictures for you:

New chairs for the balcony! No plants yet- but at least our grill isn't lonely anymore.

We got to see this cutie in Kansas City and celebrate her 4th birthday!

A lunch break on a day hike at Trail of Tears State Park...before the 20 inches of rain. (Don't mind the crazy hair!)

The school year is wrapping up here in Cape...and we are getting ready for a busy summer!  I'll try and post soon about our upcoming roadtrip!

Love from Cape G,

barberic wife