A Woman on a Mission

I lived in Connecticut and Rhode Island for a short year and a half as a Mormon Missionary in my early twenties.  Part of the job was knocking on doors to see if I along with my assigned companion could share a message about Jesus.  We did lots of other things too.  We delivered free Bibles and Books of Mormon to people who requested them from TV, we worked in soup kitchens, convalescent homes and taught lessons to families in and out of our local congregation.

The cold knocking was my least favorite part because 1. I hate to make people feel awkward and 2. Rejection is never fun.

But I believed in the message and the importance of what I was doing (still do).  Those door-knocking-days were a challenge, but there was one time of the year I didn’t mind it so much…Christmas time.  When we weren’t busy working at the local food bank or soup kitchen, our days looked like walking through beautiful New England neighborhoods taking in all of the traditionally decorated homes complete with wreaths and candles in each window.  For a girl who grew up in Arizona and Nevada, it was like being transported into a vintage postcard!

My mission experience was close to twenty years ago now (crazy!), but I still hold so many happy memories in my heart of the people I came to know and love and the beautiful New England culture.  Every Christmas I try to recreate the magic I experienced during my two New England Christmases.

How To Find Cheap Wreaths and Make them Look GOOD!

As you know by now, I’m all about giving myself creative limits.  My creativity thrives when there are limits! So I limited my budget and found a great way to make some pretty wreaths for a lot less than I could buy them for ready-made. Here’s how-to  step-by-step:

1. Go to Walmart and buy the cheap wreaths (I paid less than $5 each for a 20-inch wreath) and some pre-made bows and a roll of indoor/outdoor ribbon.  I found it really cheap at Walmart.  It looks like velvet ribbon. So pretty!
2. Go to the dollar store and purchase the cheap plastic ornaments (I stuck with red because I wanted the wreaths to look like they had holly berries on them from far away).
3. Go down the road and collect (or just buy) some pinecones.
4. Add all of the above to your cheap wreaths with some floral wire.  Now your cheap wreaths look expensive! 🙂

How to Easily Hang Wreaths So They Stay – Even on Cold, Windy Days

I did a lot of online research trying to figure out how to hang our wreaths so they would stay put in our cold and windy Idaho winters.  I found great advice for double pane windows but I don’t have double pane windows.  I also found a tutorial that used command hooks.  But the size I needed cost more than the wreath itself plus I have had bad luck with things staying put in cold weather.  We wanted something that we could do once and use year after year.

This is what we came up with:

1. Go outside on a not-too-windy, not-too-snowy day and screw these handy hooks in the center above each window.
2. Decide where on the window you want your wreaths to sit and cut your ribbon accordingly.  Tie the top in a knot and hang.
3. Enjoy and know that next year it will even be easier!
4. If you’d like to get really traditional, you can put some of these in each window as well.  I’ve had mine for three years now.  They flicker like real candles, turn off automatically during the day and make me really, really happy. 🙂

Let me know if you have any questions!  Merry Christmas.

 

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