Breaking things & Making things

I started my marriage with two dozen glasses. Twelve of them came from Frank and Jill as a wedding present: spiraled, light blue, Libby glasses. We used them for a long time without incident, until I got pregnant with Edward and became even more slippery handed than usual. That first pregnancy I broke several glasses, plates, bowls, and anything Pyrex that I happened to touch.

It happened to a lesser extent with my second pregnancy (because I had a dishwasher then and wasn't doing everything by hand), but then Edward got old enough to help empty the dishwasher and we when through another brief period of heavy breakage.

Well, after eight and a half years of marriage, after two children, and heralding the arrival of the third, the Last Blue-spiraled Libby glass broke.

Frederick, who is a good boy, cleared it from the table and threw it in the sink, because he is a crazy boy. This brings my total number of glasses down to only 5 of my original 24. We did buy some giant plastic cups last year to supplement our supply, especially after moving into a house that is 100% tile. Yikes.

Anyway, I made something cool yesterday! I've been meaning to make this wreath since last year when I saw it on Home Made Simple.com, but I hadn't gotten around to the "actualizing" stage. Until the other day when I was at Home Depot and happened to be buying 5-gallon buckets and lids, which happened to be near the paint section of the store, when the idea came again: "Get paint cards, something round, and some clothespins. Let's make this happen!" Home Depot sells clothespins? Yes.

So the round thing is a ceiling fan "medallion" which runs for $8.75 and the clothespins were 50 for $2.50. I already had the ribbons (thanks Shellie and Stephanie!), and I used a nice all-purpose glue to put 16 clothespins on the back. I like this wreath because I can change the colors and swap out the ribbon for any holiday or season (I already picked out some summer shades for May). The medallion does have flowers and fronds on it, but they're very classical-Corinthian* so no one will mind come winter time. (*See Melinda: this is me using Humanities in my everyday life.) Plus it's quirky and not quite perfect, like me.

Maybe I'll come back later and do a post about gardening called "Staking things and raking things".