Beautiful Spring Wreaths

It's official: Spring is on it's way! Yesterday was the warmest day of the year so far where I live in Northwest Oregon. We've been graced with sunny, dry weather and I just can't wait for the danger of frost to pass so I can get my garden going.

Since it's not quite time to get some spring color in the ground, I wanted to feature some of my favorite front door spring door bling from around the blogosphere. Hopefully they will inspire you to make something fabulous and colorful for your own abode!

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Spring Wreath from Under the Sycamore

I love this beautiful wreath wrapped in yarn and moss and sprinkled with beautiful butterflies. Visit her site to get the full tutorial.

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Mossy Spring Wreath from The Magic Onions

Moss is a theme I love for spring decor - especially since I'm surrounded by it as the weather warms up here. Keep moss where it belongs...on your front door (instead of in your yard!). Click the link above to visit the full tutorial.

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A Quick and Colorful Wreath from Kiki Creates

If you're in an upcycling mood, turn some fabric and sewing scraps into cute flowers and leaves to make this bright Spring wreath. Kiki doesn't have a tutorial for her wreath but she's got some great close up shots on the blog so be sure to visit to check it out!

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My Spring Wreath

Last year I made this spring wreath from some dollar store sprigs and a grapevine wreath. I can't wait to take it out of storage and hang it on my door!

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If I featured your project, please feel free to grab a button if you'd like:

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Can't get enough wreaths? I pin my favorite Wreaths year round on my Pinterest Wreaths board. 

If you've got a fabulous wreath you've made, leave a link in the comments. I'd love to pin you, too!

Funky Plant Markers (and mini-tutorial)

Silverware plant markers are by no means an original idea, but I sure love how they look!  I'm getting ready for a Spring Garden and Crafts fair on my family's farm next month and I've made a few of these both for my garden and for the fair.

I've got some "serious" ones for actually labeling plants:

And some fun ones that say more clever things:

Read the rest to check out how I made them:

Spring Wardrobe Makeover Inspiration

Among the many other crafty things I have in mind to do this spring, I definitely need to make some awesome modified t-shirts. There are so many freaking awesome tutorials floating around the blog-o-sphere right now I wanted to share some of my favorites in case you're looking to do some Spring Sewing along with your Spring Cleaning.  I've also got a "Clothing Crafts" board on my Pinterest account that you can follow if you're a Pinterest member (Not sure what Pinterest is? Tidymom wrote a really great intro here)

"Shirt Full of Posies" Tutorial from Designs by Vanessa

Living Moss Ball Tutorial

It's done. My fun little entryway spring vignette is done:

I had most of it done for about a week but the part I and most proud of?  The moss ball (far right).  You know why? Because it is the real deal - living moss. Not the fake floral aisle stuff.

There is so much awesome mossy goodness floating around the blogosphere right now. I have a whole board on my Pinterest account dedicated to moss. There are a couple great mossy rock crafts listed on Dollar Store Crafts.  My favorite (as far as the fake stuff goes), though is this one from Make the Best of Things.

She basically takes mossy rocks from the dollar store, peels off the moss and glues it to a ball form.  They look really awesome. But I asked myself: Is there a way to make these out of real moss?  Being a Pacific Northwest girl, I'm surrounded by the stuff. That, and this is what the flower basket on my gate looked like at the end of winter:

Filled. With. Moss.

I want to plant flowers in it, but what should I do with the moss? I felt bad just throwing it away. It needed a good home somewhere else.

I actually spent a couple weeks looking into the living moss ball thing. I couldn't find a tutorial online that used live moss and looked anything like what I wanted. The closest I got was finding this, which is a way to hang plants in the air and some moss gets wrapped around the base. But the bases were also pretty heavily wrapped in string. I just wanted a moss ball.  I knew I needed three things: a way to keep the moss moist and fed, moss, and a way to make it stick in a ball form.  This is what I came up with and I am thrilled with how it turned out:

Supplies Needed:

• Wet floral foam (1 sphere or 2 short cylinder shapes)
• Moss (scavenged from your yard or neighborhood)
• "Greening Pins" (I got a pack of 50 from Jo-Anns for $2)

Spring Vignette in Progress

I've been working on the spring display on top of the book shelf by our door for a few days now. It still needs a few finishing touches but I wanted to show off what I have so far:

The two things I'm missing are a living moss ball (it's going to go on top of that tall bowl of white gravel on the right) and grass growing out of the egg shell on the left (it's still sprouting).

Let me break down the different parts for you...

[Easter] Sunday's Coming!

Last week was my birthday which means....Easter is on its way!  Just a little less than a month until Easter and I'm deciding what things we want to do to celebrate and decorate around the house.  Here are a few Easter ideas I'm totally loving:

1) Grow Your Own Easter Grass

(Picture from Zakka Life)

The number one Easter idea I am TOTALLY loving this year is growing your own Easter grass. Who wants that plastic, stringy stuff anyway? It's just going to end up in the trash. Plus it's a choking hazard for both my dogs and my kiddo. When you're done, juice it or compost it.

Basic how-to:
1) Pick a pretty basket
2) Line the bottom with foil or plastic. Add a thin layer of potting soil
3) Sprinkle some rye or wheat grass seeds on the surface
4) Water and keep warm

Sustainable. Pretty. Non-plastic.  I'm sold!  We're actually heading to the nursery tomorrow to get seeds so we can start growing our grass baskets this week.

Spring Cleaning, Baby Style

Our little guy is an army crawler. He's been working on forward motion for almost 4 months now and except for when he is crawling over things, pulls himself with his arms and crawls on his belly. He's capable of crawling on his hands and knees...he just doesn't.  Which, really, is just fine with me because now it means he can contribute to household chores.  How? With this nifty-neat-o Cleaning Crew baby bodysuit:

Front:

Back:

And what's even better?  It only cost $3 to make!

Cleaning Crew Baby Bodysuit: $3
Plain White Baby Bodysuit: $2 from Walmart (or $1 if your dollar store carries them)
Car Washing Mitt: $1 from Dollar Tree
Freezer Paper for stencil: On Hand
Paint brushes & Fabric paint: On Hand

If you, too, would like to put your small child to work cleaning your hard floors, read the rest to check out the full tutorial.

Countdown to Spring: Two Buck Tuesday Redux

Last week, I posted my $2 bathroom touch up project.  This week, I tweaked it a little bit:

Before:

Now:

Really, all I did was add rocks to the bottom of the vases and take out the fake ivy (I tried to love it...but it wasn't happening).  This gives it a little bit more of a clean zen feeling and I'm digging that. Not too shabby for $5.

Countdown to Spring: My Front Door

I linked up to some awesome wreaths a couple weeks ago  There are so many fun front door items floating around the blogosphere right now!  I was leaning toward doing something fun and mossy but I was crunched for time before going out of town, so I threw this together and I must say I'm pretty happy with the results:

This wreath was pretty cheap and easy to make. Read the rest to find out how I did it...

Countdown to Spring: Two Buck Tuesday

Have I mentioned yet that I'm excited for Spring? Bring on the mossy verdant decor! I spent $2 at Dollar Tree over the weekend and was able help get our downstairs bathroom one step closer to spring:

Now, I only had to spend $2 because I already had a few of these things on hand. If you're going for a similar look from scratch, you might need to spend a tad more. Most of the stuff up there is from the Dollar Tree, though.

Dollar Store Christmas: Birdhouse

Frugal Gift 4: Birdhouse