Measuring Out My Days with Coffee Filters

With apologies to T. S. Eliot and J. Alfred Prufrock, I cannot measure out my life with coffee spoons because I don't drink coffee. Recently, however, I measured out a couple of days with coffee filters.

For the last several years, I have hung a white feather wreath on our dining room mirror at Christmastime.  Loved that wreath; I got it at a local gift shop long before feather wreaths were at the big box stores and everywhere else.  With each succeeding year though, the wreath got a little more bedraggled.  This year, I decided sadly that I really shouldn't bring it back out. What to replace it?


I liked the look of some of the coffee filter wreaths I've seen on Pinterest, and it sounded easy, so I got the supplies and got to work.

coffee filters, glue gun, glue sticks, old t-shirt, scissors, straw wreath

No matter how good my iPod playlist is (and, honeychild, I have some good stuff on there), there is a limit to how long at one sitting I can fold and crunch filters and burn my fingers with hot glue, so it took me part of two or three days to complete my wreath.

wrapped in t-shirt strips                                                               the inside edge of glued filters

I'm not going to write a tutorial since there are scads of them online already.  I will just say I used a fourteen-inch straw wreath, which I wrapped with strips of old t-shirt, and about 280 filters.  I started out trying to place the filters in rows like the tutorials suggest, but I wound up just sticking them in as close together as I could, which no doubt explains some of the finger burns.

back of the wreath

After I had glued on as many filters as I could, I trimmed the edges slightly, but my wreath is not perfect.  It's kind of cockeyed, which suits me just fine as I'm a bit cockeyed myself.  I initially planned a ribbon hanger wrapped around the wreath, but soon scrapped that and filled the entire thing with filters.  I attached a length of ribbon to the back with straight pins and hot glue.  I used one of those cool 3M Command hangers directly on the mirror.  In years past, I took the mirror down and hung the feather wreath from a ribbon taped to the back of the mirror.  The 3M hook was so much easier -- love that!

For those of you who have been wondering why I haven't posted lately, I have indeed been busy, but I had also run out of photo space (again!) on Picasa.  I am now trying a Flickr account.  I hope this will be the ticket.

Food Ornaments

Collections.  What makes a collection?  Lately I’ve noticed on Etsy a number of listings that promise the buyer an “instant collection.”  If it’s instant, is it still a real collection?  Alison from The Polohouse recently got me thinking about the things people collect.  I believe a real collection is one that is amassed over time, preferably with a lot of searching and poking around in all kinds of places.  

We seem to collect a lot of things at our house – books, flow blue china, Fiestaware, nutcrackers, dust, dog hair.  (Whoops!  Getting into undesirable collections!)   My favorite collection, though, is one we began around twenty years ago and continue to expand year after year – blown glass food ornaments.  

one of the originals

It started at an Elder-Beerman department store in Toledo, Ohio.  We had only been married a year or so and were visiting my in-laws.  We stopped in at the local mall and saw the most unusual Christmas ornaments in the shapes of carrots, bell peppers, and onions.  I’d never seen anything like them.  I loved them at first sight, but, as I said, we hadn’t been married too long, so we were on a tight budget.  We left without the ornaments.  I must have rhapsodized about them quite a bit back at my in-laws, however, because after we were back home in Illinois, we received a package from my mother-in-law full of the ornaments.  A collection was born.  

There were many years when we couldn’t find any food ornaments, especially since we kept it strictly to vegetables and fruit for a long time.  Then one day I saw a hamburger.  I had to have it.  I absolutely love a good hamburger, so the ornament was calling my name.  That hamburger opened the floodgates.  It led to another hamburger, a slice of pizza, ice cream, a cupcake, a doughnut, a hot dog, and a fortune cookie.  

hamburger #2: you can also see the first hamburger in the lower right corner

For a long time, the food ornaments went on the regular Christmas tree, but eventually we had enough to decorate a skinny, 6-foot, artificial tree that we put in our dining room.  Many of our ornaments are Old World brand, but we have also gotten ornaments at Sur la Table, outlet kitchen stores, Farm N Fleet, you name it.  If it is blown glass, food, and it looks good, we’ll buy it.  We even have a few that don’t look that good, like an enormous, sickly yellowish green thing that is either a large lemon or a gigantic lime.  Either way, it’s ugly.  Still, I do draw the line sometimes.  In November, I saw a peanut butter and jelly sandwich by Old World.  Great idea, but not much in the looks department.  It looked like a big white square with a little oozing color along the sides.  Nah.

Still, we are always on the lookout.  Our most recent ornament is a gift from our daughter this Christmas, a walnut.  There’s always something new to be found!

My Early Christmas Present

Two of the four stars -- even the backs are pretty!

My lovely friend, Cat, from Miss Marple Makes, made these fabulous clay stars.  I ordered them from her Etsy shop on December 11 and have been anxiously waiting for them to arrive.  They had to make their way to Middle America all the way from Wales.  And today they came!  Aren't they wonderful?  I am so excited that they arrived in time for Christmas -- an early gift for me!

I hope everyone's holidays are filled with unexpected joys.

Merry Christmas!

Pom Pom Garland Deluxe!

A beautiful sight, we're happy tonight, walking in a pom pom wonderland.  Some of you know about my obsession with pom poms.  My pom pom garland is finally finished and hanging on the stairs.  It's a little funky and homespun, but I am thrilled with it.  All my pom pom dreams are fulfilled.

We balanced the garland by making the Currier and Ives children prints that hang on the stair wall into reindeer.  (I love these prints.  They used to hang on the stairs at my in-laws' house.  They are just about my favorite thing.)  Some years, the prints sport bows; one year each child wore a construction paper Santa hat.  This year, my daughter made antlers and felt noses.  I got the idea from Country Living.  They showed the noses and antlers drawn onto picture glass with dry erase markers.  I like our version better since the antlers can extend onto the frames.  Pretty cute, huh?

Cute in a mutant way!