Works for Me Wednesday

For the longest time, I had a hard time figuring out with what I could decorate my front door. I live in a duplex, and it is nice to have something to greet people as they come in besides the black and dusty door on my front porch. I had this one lonely wintery decoration, but that was it. And unfortunately, my snowman/snowflake themed welcome sign (which I like a lot) can't exactly stay up all year. Especially in charleston, where I have seen neither a snowflake nor a snowman. I also can't go out and spend a lot of money buying things for every different season. Last fall or so, I decided to solve my problem. I found an empty lot that had a bunch of grape vines growing in it. (At least I think it was grape vines, although I never actually saw any grapes, as it was fall.) Down here in the south, these vines grow everywhere, in many empty lots and wooded areas. I created a wreath out of the vines. Anyone can make a wreath out of these vines. Just wind a circle out of vine a little larger than the size wreath you want, and then just continue winding vines around the circle you made. Obviously, a store bought wreath would work just as well.

Each season change or so this year, I have gone to walmart and bought fairly cheap fake flowers, greenery, ribbon, or any combination of these. I'll cut apart the flowers and leaves and then stick them into the wreath. Since it isn't woven together too tightly, that usually isn't too hard, or I also got some florist wire and can tie things to the wreath if I need. And now that I have a fairly wide variety of flowers, I won't need to keep buying things. I simply need to go into my closet and pull out what I did last year and put it all together. This way, I can get some variety in my decorations without too much expense. Since I'm a med student, it also sort of satisfies the creative bug I have that doesn't get used as much as I'd like. For your viewing pleasure I have included two photos of two different designs that I have done, one from Christmas and the other I just put up this week.



For the christmas wreath I just used some of the cuttings from our Christmas tree that we had to make to get it into the stand.

You can head over to Shannon to check out the other works-for-me wednesday tips!