Tag Archives: Young House Love

Fall Pinterest Challenge: Holiday Ornament Wreath

When Sherry at Young House Love. issued the Fall Pinterest Challenge last Tuesday, I eagerly accepted… Annnnd then later that day I found myself in the acrylic paint aisle at Michaels, completely overwhelmed and unable to decide which Pinterest project I should finally take on. Ack. Cue crafting meltdown.

After recovering, thanks to the help of some Panera mac ‘n cheese, I thought it’d be smart to get a head-start on some Christmas crafts, since that’s what I’ve been pinning a lot of lately.

Ornament Wreath Collage

The winner? An Ornament Wreath. The inspiration? This one, and this one.

Except mine would be all in silvers and whites to fit into the sparkly scheme I’m dreaming up for our mantle/family room this Christmas.

After reading up on some other bloggers’ tutorials to gauge how many ornaments I’d need (answer: a ton), I shopped around hoping to find some all-silver sets including small, medium and large sizes. I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted, but Hobby Lobby had the next best thing – a set of 50 medium ornaments in various silvers for $19.99 plus 40% off! They also had color-coordinated sets of smaller ornaments.

I pretty much followed the instructions from Deep Fried Kudzu, starting with spray-painting a 14″ foam wreath so that the green parts wouldn’t show through. I used Krylon Brushed Metallics Satin Finish in Nickel.

ornament wreath supplies - Two Purple Couches

Once dry, I flipped the wreath over so the back of it would face me while I worked. I removed all of the ornament caps, then started gluing the largest ones around the outer edge of the wreath, just like so:

ornament wreath progress - Two Purple Couches

I was relieved when the ornaments were nearly-perfectly spaced around the outer edge! Yesss! I didn’t even count that out in advance!

Then I did the inner circle. I decided to use up some remaining large ornaments, with a few mediums throw in for good measure.

Ornament wreath rows - Two Purple Couches

I waited a bit until everything seemed dry and secure. Then I flipped the wreath over and plotted out a “pattern” of medium and small ornaments. Here’s why my photo-taking fell apart. Sorry. I was in the Glue Zone.

So, here’s the finished product. Ta-da!

ornament wreath - Two Purple Couches

Not gonna lie, I’m pretty pleased with myself for completing a Christmas craft before November! I am never this on-the-ball! And before you ask, no, I do not have any gift-shopping completed yet. Priorities, people!

ornaments

Come back in December to see how my Sparkly Winter Wonderland theme pans out. This wreath will surely be taking center-stage.

And now, a few stats to round out this post:

Total Number of Ornaments Used – about 100! Broken down by size: 27 small, 50 medium, and 24 large. I think it was enough. Honestly, you could probably keep gluing ornaments to each other until the cows come home!

Total Number of Glue-Gun Burns – only 1!

Total Project Cost – about $35

DIY Ornament Wreath - Holiday Wreath - Two Purple Couches

You can find my Pinterest Holiday Decor board here, or all of my Pinterest boards here.

Thanks for reading! Now go check out the other great projects from the Fall Pinterest Challenge Hostesses!

Sherry @ Young House Love / Sarah @ Ugly Duckling House / Katie @ BowerPower / Carmel @ Our Fifth House

I’m already getting ideas together for the Winter Challenge 😉

I’m also sharing this DIY at:
The Shabby Nest

Home for the Holidays 2012

Two Purple Couches Gets a Little Young House Lovin’!

This was part of (well, most of) my exciting plans for the weekend… MEETING JOHN AND SHERRY PETERSIK!!!!

While I haven’t been following Young House Love since Day 1, or even Day 880, I have been so inspired by them. Not just their incredible design style and home transformations, but their down-to-earth personalities, unique voices, and their profuse amount of tips on blogging itself. From creating professional-looking photos, to how they decide on post topics, to how they’ve turned blogging into a business, they played a huge role in inspiring me to start this blog, and making me believe that someone out there, besides my mom, might actually want to read it. (I think it’s high time I give a shout-out to my readers and followers! THANK YOU!!! You guys rock my socks!!!)

Sorry for the tangent. Back to the post topic: MEETING JOHN AND SHERRY PETERSIK!!!!

John & Sherry were part of a local book festival called Books by the Banks, that featured lots of books for sale (obviously), authors and panel discussions. John & Sherry were signing/chatting with fans, and also giving a talk (9 things they learned during the process of writing their book).

If you’re curious, that’s Robert & Cortney Novogratz in the foreground, signing their book, Home by Novogratz.

There they are! When we arrived, there were about 60-70 people in line in front of us.

Not going to lie, I felt like I was waiting for the Beatles to de-board the plane for their first North American tour. Ok, maybe I wasn’t crying for joy and screaming at the top of my lungs. But I was as giddy as a schoolboy.

My “giddy schoolboy” face; holding my advance copy, made available by awesome local bookstore Joseph Beth Booksellers.

I really wanted to bring along a ceramic animal for Sherry to sign (DORK! I know…), but we were running late on Saturday morning and I couldn’t make up my mind what to grab.

I’ll spare you a minute-by-minute recap of the butterfly-stomach-fluttering and heart-palpitation-ensuing drama that occurred. Suffice it to say that I nearly didn’t make the signing cutoff before John and Sherry were whisked away to give their talk, which could have resulted in a lost spot in line, and would have set Tom and me waaaayyyy back for our plans to meet friends and drive alllll the way north to Toledo to watch the UC Bearcats football team vs. Toledo that night. Well, sorry, that does kind of tell you the whole story. Anywho, I made it up to their table in time.

Their talk was really good. They started with a little bio of them (Sherry was a copywriter, too! Heck yea copywriters!) and then went through 9 things they learned while working on their home/the book. There were a lot of really good reminders, i.e. don’t feel like you have to do everything perfectly and all at once. This is an especially good reminder for me, because I always feel pressure to have our house more decorated than it is at this point (we haven’t been here a year yet). And it was very reassuring to hear these reminders from people I revere as “experts” and whose advice I would readily take to heart.

 

Really cool idea to steal in the future (if I ever publish a book, that is,): they asked fans to sign their copy of the book! How fun is that! Now they’ll have a memento from all of their book signings! John asked me to draw a picture of something, but I blanked and just wrote my name.

I’m so excited that I got the opportunity to meet them. I’ve been leafing through their book (I’m not an overnight reader; I prefer to savor each page), and I already have tons of new ideas. Maybe I’ll start a little mini-series of posts of YHL-inspired projects!

And, I cannot finish this post without giving HUGE thanks to my husband Tom, without whom none of this would have gone down as smoothly as it did. He allowed me to drag him to a book festival, act like a giddy schoolboy, and was even willing to hold our spot in line so I could sit in on their talk. Oh, and he let me stop at Starbucks before we left! Thanks Tom! You’re the best!