My One & Only Valentine Decoration...

Last year at this time I had made the horribly painful but lovely Coffee Filter Wreath but since it was filthy with irremovable dirt by October, I spray painted it black and added mini pumpkins, to serve as our new Halloween wreath. Not wanting to go through the painful process of another coffee filter wreath, I searched high and low for a new wreath project.




I really hated to put away my Christmas wreath because I love it so much, all sparkly and bright. So after a bit of thought I decided to make a Valentine Ornament Wreath. When I began to look for a heart wreath form to build upon, I found everyone in town to be out of them, save for one smallish wreath on the bottom shelf (at the very back of the shelf) at Hobby Lobby. Of course, thinking that I could easily acquire plenty of red/reddish ornaments, I was further disappointed to discover that NO STORES had any left except for some at Target. I immediately became overwhelmed with greed and piled every single box of medium and small sized red ornaments all marked 80%, yes 80% discounted, into my basket.


Who cares if people were staring at me as if I'd lost my brain somewhere in the parking lot? I was on a mission. Assuring myself that these would be enough for the project, I checked out and raced home to get started. As usual, it wasn't enough but no place in town had any left and I went everywhere that sold (or had sold) ball ornaments, probably spending a small fortune in gasoline, right?




I worked feverishly for two days until I reached the point that I knew I couldn't finish without more red ornaments. Fully aware that there were no more to be had locally, I searched the internet for miniature red balls that would be used to fill in the gaps of my wreath. The cost was astronomical on the scale of after Christmas ornaments, so I declined. Then I did the unthinkable. Yes, I unpacked all of the ornaments I'd already carefully packed away and I robbed what few red ornaments I could find. Then I robbed the front porch decorative trees of their red ornaments as well. Frankly, I decided I could just worry about them next year when supplies are plentiful.

 Still, I had gaps that needed to be filled in on the wreath, so I finally had to break down and use some champagne colored mini ornaments I had put away for next year. I suppose I'll have to replace those as well, when the time comes. Until then, they did a nice job of filling in the remaining holes, don't cha think?


The most amazing thing to me is that you can't buy ball ornaments out of season and fleaBay is always a crap shoot. You never know what you'll end up with and it almost always costs more than it's actually sold for at retail prices. Who runs these places anyway? Don't they know that people craft 365 days of the year? They could have made a tidy sum, but they had nothing to sell. Too bad for the retailers, huh?

Did I mention we are scheduled to have another snow tomorrow night? I'm cynical but the hubby says it's guaranteed by the weather service. A guarantee from them is absolutely worthless, thank you anyway. Why does anyone believe them? Their ratio for being accurate is like 2%. Hello.




However, it turned out that they were right, for once. We received 14 inches of snow within 24 hours. Who says this is West Texas?