Mr. CraftyPaws and I got our first Christmas tree after we moved from our tiny apartment in NYC 5 years ago to a regular-sized house in Atlanta. That first year, I made every single Christmas tree ornament, and as you can imagine lots of them featured Biscuit and Bandito. With each subsequent Christmas I added to these handmade ornaments, making our tree a true representation of our family. With the passing of my sweet 17 year 4+ month Biscuit this spring, I have not had the heart to take down her pictures (which are still all over the house, especially in my craft room), and now I face holiday decorating with mixed feelings.\u00a0<\/a>I just couldn’t face dealing with all those memories so rather than following the tradition of getting our tree after Thanksgiving, Mr. CraftyPaws and I decided that we would keep the holiday decor simple this year and perhaps just hang a couple of wreaths.\u00a0 So I picked up a simple live wreath for $8 at Walmart (this was even cheaper than the $10 live wreaths at Trader Joe’s, but I might go pick one of those up since I think they’re made of Boxwood).<\/p>\n

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First I had to take off the cheap plastic\/faux velvet bow, and made a triple loop bow from silver metal mesh wired ribbon and a double loop red and white sparkly satin wired ribbon that I secured to the top of the wreath with twist ties. Then I dragged out my Rubbermaid container where I had stashed post-holiday clearance buys from Michaels’ $2 grab bags (yes, these are from before they raised the prices to $3 and then $4) and the Dollar Tree years ago.<\/p>\n

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I tried to keep the same types of decorations in odd numbers for a pleasing look and started by tying on 3 small red and white wooden snowflake ornaments and 3 rough metal and wire snowflakes; these were the old Michaels pick-ups. Then I re-discovered some shimmery plastic snowflakes with clay embellishments layered on them that I had put together from the Dollar Tree. One of them had a little apricot poodle head at the center of a poinsettia flower, but somehow it seemed right to have this little reminder of Biscuit front and center on the wreath.<\/p>\n

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This last picture is how the wreath looks hanging on our front door. I am pleased with the simple, layered homespun look. It’s personal but it wasn’t emotionally taxing for me to craft. In fact, it was enjoyable enough that I am considering doing another one for our side kitchen door! I love how warm and welcoming it looks when folks approach our home from the cold outside.<\/p>\n

This wreath is being entered into the following challenges:
\nSimon Says Stamp Wednesday Baby It’s Cold Outside Challenge<\/a><\/span>
\nWord Art Wednesday Anything Goes Challenge<\/a><\/span>
\nCreatalicious Anything Goes with Optional Layer It Up Challenge<\/a><\/span>
\nLil Patch of Crafty Friends Anything Goes Challenge<\/a><\/span>
\nFab ‘n’ Funky Christmas Challenge<\/a><\/span>
\nJust Keep On Creating Anything Goes Challenge<\/a><\/span>
\n613 Avenue Create Anything Goes with Optional Winter\/Christmas Challenge<\/a><\/span>
\nCrafts Galore Encore Anything Goes Challenge<\/a><\/span>
\nThe Corrosive Challenge Anything Goes<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mr. CraftyPaws and I got our first Christmas tree after we moved from our tiny apartment in NYC 5 years ago to a regular-sized house in Atlanta. That first year, I made every single Christmas tree ornament, and as you can imagine lots of them featured Biscuit and Bandito. With each subsequent Christmas I added […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11898,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20,12,58],"tags":[3859,2881,3860,3862,3863,3861],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11893"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11893"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11900,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11893\/revisions\/11900"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craftypaws.us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}