Our Spot: Bloom

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Bloom

"And the day came when the strength to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the strength it took to ....

-Anis Nin

I try not to get too philisophical or sentimental in blog, why? I don't know probably cause I'm afriad of "mushy" stuff. But my dear sis-in law, Diana, brought to my attention that I could say more about how I feel about my family.
So today is my ode to my "little" sisters-in-law...
I met little D when she was in 8th grade. Two things were obvious immediately, she was crazy smart and very talkative. In fact one of my favorite memories of her will always be everyone saying to her at family dinner, "Diana, volume down." I'm sure she hated it but it's actually a great compliment to her charisma. D is now a working woman, she used her brillance (which she will roll her eyes at and say that it's not all brillance, but honey, knowing how and when to work hard IS part of the brillance) and got herself a degree in accounting and has a CPA. When you need business advice or a sounding board, or feel like being a sounding board...go talk to D she's full of ideas, insight, and I LOVE the passion she brings into the conversation. And when she says she's not domestic, DON'T believe her!
I met Jessi when she was in 6th grade right before she went into Young Women's. Oh my heck! She was So teeny and QUIET. I could hardly even get a couple words out of her. Since she's the baby it didn't surprise me that she would still sit in her mother's lap, what was so funny though was that she still FIT in her mother's lap. I remember Jessi always was watching cartoons and she LOVED Animaniacs which she knew all the words to the songs. And I remember the "pen phase" (has she ever left that phase) and how she literally collected bazillions of pens and would rank them and qualify them by how they felt in her hand, by the way they wrote and the color of ink they held. Anyway Jessi is a movie buff, she has an amazing library of music, she has her teaching degree and does crazy things like jumps out of airplanes, and jumps of of cliffs. My favorite hobby that she has is baking. mmmm!
I love my little sis-in-laws and I'm looking forward to seeing them this week!

1 comment:

Michelle said...: That was fun learning about Diana and Jessi. Thanks for sharing.; June 10, 2008 at 7:49 PM

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Spotlights

Fall Felt Flower Wreath
Try this tutorial site for how to make the felt flower.
http://junepfaffdaley.blogspot.com/2009/09/sweet-sweater-rosettes.html (I changed part of this method, see below)

Items Needed:
12" Styrofoam wreath
20 - 24 felt sheets from the craft store
fabric scissors
glue gun (with plenty of sticks)
berry sprigs, garland, whatever you can find for cheep

Note on flowers: After cutting the spiral I rolled my flower up with out glueing. I added a dab of hot-melt at the end. I did not put a felt circle bottom on the flower either. I just went with gusto on the glue and stuck it to the wreath ;) That's crafting my way.

Method: First I cut two and a half of my felt sheets into one inch strips. Spiraling the strips around my wreath I glued them to the styrofoam surface. Next I went to work on the flowers.

For the Three largest flowers I simply cut the spiral and then loosily "swirled" it and added hot-melt wherever needed. I cut three sizes of flowers (5 in, 4in, and 2 in) That made something like 8 large, 12 medium, and a gazillion small flowers (don't worry you'll need them). After making all my flowers I went about arranging them. That's the hardest part for me. AND the nice part for you since you can put them anywhere you want. In the end I decided I wanted My focal spot to be the bottom right "corner" of the wreath.

I started with gluing the three large flowers first. I then snipped off a few berry's and glued them in the centers. Then I just worked out from there, using the 5in flowers to get me going out away from the focal flowers. Because I used five colors in my wreath (sage green, berry, tan, chocolate, and mustard) I tried to not only work with the right size where I needed it but also tried not to have the same color ever touching. With five colors it was easier to accomplish this than I thought. One thing I learned was to periodically lift my project up to make sure I was covering enough surface area that I didn't see the skin of on the inside or the outside of the wreath.

Voila! Ready to hang.