Pinterest Project: Felt Holiday Wreath

I've caught the crafting bug again, with all of the holiday project inspiration popping up on Pinterest and blogs that I love!

And this post was just going to be a "oooh, look at the pretty wreath I made, here's the link to the instructions" kind of post. But honestly, the instructions kinda suck, so I figured I might as well go into some more detail, in case anyone else pinned this wreath and is interested in making it themselves.

But first, this was what I had pinned:

Pinterest via Better Homes and Gardens

Adorable, right? The color scheme is my favorite part, since it's less traditional, and so bright and cheery. Perfect for contrasting on our black colored front door.

So, I glanced at the directions, to see how much felt I would need, and proceeded to buy a 16 inch door sized foam wreath and four colors of felt. Luckily though I had bought an extra sheet of each color (and even more of the red to make the poinsettia)....remember how I'd said above that the instructions weren't great?

Well, you can find the instructions here, but this is all it said:

Cut seven 1x8-inch strips each from turquoise blue, light blue, red, and lime felt using pinking shears. Referring to the photo, wrap strips around a foam wreath with each strip slightly overlapping the previous strip; pin strips to back of wreath. Follow the instructions below to make the poinsettia flower; pin the felt poinsettia to the wreath.

Notice anything missing? Like, uh, what size of wreath to buy to accompany your seven 1x8-inch strips of felt? Yeah, thank goodness I was smart enough to think about it when I got out all of my supplies. No way was 7 strips that are 1 inch wide x 4 colors of felt going to cover a 16 inch wreath. They must have used a 10 inch wreath, to allow for overlap.

And this really ticked me off.

Isn't it the jobs of whoever is publishing these tutorials to be thorough and accurate? It's not like this is on some random blog, it's on a major magazine's website! I really enjoy making tutorials myself, and this just really annoyed me, to leave off something so simple as the size of the wreath. And of course, this comes after I was just burned on the last project I worked on, which came from a Martha Stewart tutorial, and the measurements given were completely off. Like, off by double. So I'm feeling a little bitter about the integrity of the inspiration projects I've been finding lately.

/end rant

Oh, and by the way, I totally plan to write about my other failed project, I just want to figure out a way to redo it so it works first. You know, provide anyone reading this with something accurate!

So anyway. Back to the wreath.

I had to figure out if I could even still make it, given the amount of felt I had on hand. So instead of doing math, I took the shortcut, and just measured the circumference of the wreath with a tape measure. Rounding up, it was about 51 inches. So I figured I could do seven strips of 2 inch wide pieces of felt, which would equal 56 inches, and give me enough room for overlap.

Once I figured out the correct amount and size of felt I needed, the rest was mostly smooth sailing. I used a pen and a 2 inch piece of scrap card stock to mark my cut lines on the back side of the felt.

(Yep, circle punches and dark wood grain paper are involved in yet another in progress project I've got in the works!)

Pinking shears were kind of a pain on the felt, but it worked best if I cut shorter sections at a time.

Another note about the instructions on the BH&G site...I'm not sure what is up with the directive to pin the felt to the foam wreath. I guess maybe if you want to reuse the wreath for something else in the future, it makes sense. But I sure know myself--after all this work, no way am I going to want to take it apart! Spending $8.99 on foam the next time I want to make a wreath sounds a whole lot easier in my book, so I just went ahead and hot glued the felt on the foam wreath.

Also, yet another note, the 8 inch long strips in the original tutorial don't work on a 16 inch wreath either. I cut my strips to the full 9 inch width of the felt, and they barely overlapped in the back. Just one more measurement issue to keep in mind!

Completely wrapped and glued into place:

Requisite cat photo. She was "helping" by nestling in my scrap garbage bag on the floor next to me.

The poinsettia tutorial wasn't quite as bad, although it lacked photos to really illustrate the steps. But at least it came with a PDF template (found at the bottom of the tutorial page I linked to above) for you to cut out to make your shapes. The main issue I had was, and maybe this comes down to just being lazy, but I more think it's my need to not deal with overly complicated, unnecessary steps, but they wanted you to cut out the patterns on paper, then iron something called freezer paper (WTH even is that?!?) onto your felt, then trace the patterns on the freezer paper, and only then can you cut out your felt and remove the freezer paper stuff.

Ok, I'm not exactly a genius or anything but....nobody is gonna see the back side of these. And who the heck has "freezer paper" handy, or even knows what it is (hmmm, I'm beginning to think I should probably Google it).

So chalk it up to laziness or whatever, but I just traced the pattern on the back of the damn felt, cut it out, and called it a day. No freezer paper required (for inquiring minds).

Then, making the poinsettia was pretty easy, although like I said, I would have enjoyed more photos to illustrate the steps. You're welcome. This is how you pinch the leaves and glue them (except again, I simplified their instructions, and instead of using fabric glue and a clothes pin to hold the pinched part, I just went straight for hot glue that dried in 10 seconds, and didn't have to worry about holding anything in place).

Glue the leaves to the bottom star shape, add something for the center of the flower (I used pearls, since I thought they looked prettier than the recommended circles of white felt. Also, I did not have white felt on hand).

Sigh. Is anyone else getting tired of my complaints? I am. And I sure was when following the steps to make this wreath. The last thing they left off was that you need a way to hang it. Unless of course you're just going to shove the nail on your door straight into the foam? Not a good solution to me, but hey, whatever works I guess! For my wreath though, I just made a little loop out of scrap felt and hot glued it to the back, top of the wreath. Instant hanging hook.

Thank goodness, I was done! Ready to hang it on the front door.

I really hope the rest of the projects I'm planning on working on over the next couple of weeks don't turn out to be so incomplete or a pain to figure out. Last night I came out of Michaels Crafts $90 poorer, so I've got a lot in the works!

Have you ever come across poorly done or incomplete tutorials online? Does it annoy you as much as this one annoyed me? :)

Fall Leaves

Whew! I am exhausted. We just got back from a week on the west coast, and I seriously underestimated how much the three hour time difference would effect me. But spending time with family, friends, and being back in the office for three days took a serious toll. Everyone wanted a piece of me, and I was just too exhausted to blog in the evenings; crawling into bed at 8:45pm PST was way more enticing, after involuntarily waking up each day well before sunrise. So, sorry for my week off of blogging! I was just too beat, and have been fighting off getting sick all week, on top of just being sleep deprived.

I'm also pretty tired from the hours we just spent in the yard this afternoon, mowing and raking up all of the fall leaves. Where I grew up in Washington State, we really never had to deal with leaves, just pine cones. But they're so pretty before they fall, it's worth the clean up work. Pretty fall leaves are definitely one of the advantages of living on the east coast, especially when all you have to do to see the colors is to look in your backyard!

Next year though, I definitely think we need to invest in a leaf blower. With just one rake and a broom between the two of us, it took way too long to pick these all up!

Do you have pretty fall leaves that turn into tiresome lawn debris where you live? Is the prettiness of the fall leaf colors worth the extra yard work?

Lower Calorie Swap: Homemade Caramel Macchiato

I still remember the very first time I tried a Starbucks Caramel Macchiato. I was in high school and it was on the morning of my PSATs. I went with a couple friends before the test, but I'd never been to a Starbucks before, and had no idea what to order, since I wasn't a coffee drinker and my parents weren't really coffee drinkers either.

But my friend placed her order first. Something kind of hard to pronounce, but had the word "caramel" in it, so I figured I'd just order the same thing. And it was love at first sip! The sweet, buttery caramel sauce, the smooth, lingering flavor of vanilla--I can pinpoint it to the day when I became a coffee lover. All because of a Caramel Macchiato.

And I've been a Caramel Macchiato fan for over a decade now. But in early 2010, when I started dieting for our wedding, I started counting calories. Have you ever tried to religiously count calories before? Let me tell you, it is damn depressing!

Just look at my beloved, 5 times a week morning pick-me-up:

via Starbucks.com

Ugh, 270 calories just for a drink! And if you had this with 2%, it goes up to 330 calories. Just the caramel sauce alone is 160 calories for 2 tablespoons.

(My special occasion stash!)

So that is when I, very, very sadly, gave up my Caramel Macchiatos (although I did reward myself with one on the morning of our wedding!). I instead switched to Iced Venti Skinny Vanilla Lattes, which only had 110 calories.

It was never as satisfying though.

But a year and a half after I gave up Caramel Macchiatos, I've finally found a way to swap out a lot of the calories, and still get the rich caramel taste that I love. By making my own version at home with this yummy creamer!

The International Delights Coffee House Inspirations Caramel Macchiato flavor is pretty dang good. And this is coming from someone who has never been a fan of creamers before. I'm really glad I gave it a chance when I happened to spot it at the grocery store. The best part though? Only 35 calories per tablespoon!

To make my lower calorie Caramel Macchiato at home, I use three pumps of Starbucks Sugar Free Vanilla Syrup (I order it several bottles at a time from here, since I like it way better than the Torani vanilla syrup you can get at the grocery store. Trust me, the syrup definitely makes a difference when trying to imitate the Starbucks taste.).

(I also measured it, in case you don't have a syrup pump. 3 pumps is about 1 2/3rds tablespoons. But since it's calorie-free, you can use as much or as little as you want. For reference, a venti skinny vanilla latte has 6 pumps of vanilla syrup.)

Now, when you make a regular Caramel Macchiato, you layer the ingredients as: syrup, milk, espresso shots, ice, caramel sauce. But because I use creamer instead of milk (and I was always guilty of stirring the regular Caramel Macchiatos as soon as they were made), the order doesn't matter, as long as you add the ice last.

So after adding my syrup, I brew three shots of espresso (5 calories per shot, for 15 calories total) and add them to my glass.

Then in goes 2 tablespoons of the creamer (35 calories per tablespoon, for 70 calories total).

Followed by a couple of handfuls of ice.

Stir, and you've got a yummy imitation Caramel Macchiato, for only 85 calories!

SO much better than 270 calories, and it's a very close match in taste. Plus, you don't have to worry about your straw getting clogged up with caramel sauce anymore.

The only drawback is that when you're using creamer and not milk, you are missing out on some of your regular calcium intake. So that's why I keep a bottle of multivitamins next to my espresso machine, and I take one with my coffee every morning. It's a win-win, since I get my calcium, plus a lot of other vitamins, and I'm saving a ton of calories every morning.

***Oh, and by the way, if you're not a fan of iced coffee like I am (I drink it year round), the same recipe works well for a hot drink as well. 3 pumps of vanilla syrup, 3 shots of espresso, 2 tablespoons of creamer, stir and drink! And still only 85 calories.***

Do you have a favorite coffee shop drink? Have you ever looked up how many calories are in your favorite coffee? Counting calories has made me realize just how ridiculous most of my favorite food and drinks really are!

A Kinda Fun Fashion Discovery

Well, being so busy with work has made me very unsuccessful at doing my Work From Home outfit posts. But I did manage to dress up one day last week, to go to the grocery store.

And at the same time, I also made kind of a fun fashion discovery!

See this cute ruffled red scarf?

Does it look familiar at all? How about now?

Yep, that's right, I discovered that I can turn this dress into a scarf!

The dress just happened to be lying over the arm of my chaise lounge bench in such a way that when I glanced down at it, I realized it sort of looked like a scarf from that angle. So I grabbed it and played around for a minute, when I realized I could just pull it through the arm holes and it magically turned into a scarf!

Like so:

Black Top: Target, Jean Pencil Skirt: Express, Brown Belt: Target, Dress-Turned-Scarf: Target, Brown Boots: Reneeze, Earrings and Bracelets: Target and H&M

The blue flowers on the dress even work well with my Anthropologie coat!

So that was my fun little discovery last week. I'm excited to try it out with a couple of more dresses too, since how great is it to find a use for my sundresses before next spring? I've opened up a whole world of new scarf possibilities that are already in my closet!

Have you ever made a surprising fashion discovery, or found a new way to wear something that was already in your wardrobe?

A Tuesday

Wow, I haven't posted in a while. A whole week! I think this is about the longest I've been gone from blogging in quite some time, but I've been super busy with work. Meaning all I want to do at the end of the day is have a glass of wine, not craft or get dressed up or otherwise do things I'd normally blog about. Oh well, this happens every year around this time, since it's the busiest time of the year for me at work, through the new year. Plus, this past weekend was my husband's birthday, so I was a good wife and stayed off the computer all weekend, so I could spend time with him instead.

But since I've been so busy the past couple of weeks, I thought I'd share what a day in my life is like right now. It's very different than when I have slow times at work (my job in Marketing Communications is either very busy or very slow, not much in between, since a big part of what I do is linked to how many new products my company is launching at any given time), so maybe I'll do another one of these once things slow down. But I've always enjoyed reading other blogger's 'a day in my life' posts, so here is mine, from yesterday!

9am - Hit snooze alarm (I live on the east coast, but work for a west coast company, so my hours are shifted a little)

9:30am - Wake up, brush teeth, head downstairs to check work emails

(My new desk set up, looking out on our backyard, so I can watch for wildlife. The blue blanket draped over the front of the desk is so I can move my feet around without scaring the deer, since they seem to be very aware and sensitive to movement.)

10am - Urgent emails are answered, go back upstairs to make coffee and breakfast
10:05am - Take breakfast of hard boiled egg, go-gurt and coffee (232 calories) back to desk

10:35am - Send out new product launch announcement that I started on last night

(edited for privacy)

 
10:40am - Go get dressed for tennis lessons
10:50am - Drive to tennis, leave a voicemail for a co-worker on the way
11:00am - Tennis lessons

12:00pm - Drive home from tennis
12:10pm - Jump in the shower to rinse off, throw on some jeans, a t-shirt, and slippers, since I know I've got emails waiting for me to respond to, no time to iron clothes and do my hair

12:13pm - Sync my Fitbit to my computer, see that I burned 281 calories at my tennis lessons, log what I ate for breakfast
12:15pm - Answer more work emails, follow up with people I'm waiting for content or approvals from

12:30pm - Check personal email, pin a cute photo from the Better Homes and Gardens newsletter. 

Open an email from our real estate company about a house that matches our search criteria. Drool over a super cute 3,000 sq ft house on 1 acre that’s selling price was just lowered $20k (We're not seriously looking to buy until early spring, but it's very encouraging to get frequent emails about great houses in our price range)
12:43pm - Back to responding to work emails
1:15pm - Eat lunch of a peanut butter, butter and honey sandwich and 27 grapes (347 calories) with husband while watching the news

1:35pm - Head back downstairs, answer more emails, begin working on international versions of the product launch announcement that went out in the morning
2:30pm - Conference call to kick-off a new in development product

(My tennis lessons in the middle of the day are really making it hard to dress up. Not enough time before the lessons, and no point, and then I get sucked back into work after I get back, and just haven't been getting around to getting all dolled up.)

2:40pm - Multitask on the call by putting together a USA vs Canadian price comparison chart, for an upcoming price change communication
3:02pm - Conference call ends, take another call to hash out a quick promo idea for the Pro Audio market, run margin analysis and put together a quick promo flyer

3:26pm - Cat walks by, stops to stare at a bug or something in the grass (cats walking by actually happened all day)

3:39pm - Receive IM from co-worker, shares some gossip, I confirm a product price for her
3:45pm - Back to working on international announcements, updating regional pricing, editing the PowerPoints
4:30pm - Begin working on a product launch announcement for a different product, send content to product manager for approval

4:48pm - Kitty jumps in my lap for a couple minutes of petting

5:09pm - Go grab a snack of a Cherry Coke Zero and 9 Quaker Quakes Rice Snacks, sprinkled with garlic for a snack (70 Calories), log it in Fitbit

5:15pm - Take a call from my boss's boss, set up a meeting for later in the week to go over the dealer program management process improvements I've been working on, to roll out for 2012
5:21pm - The fox darts across the yard, as my fat cat watches sleepily from a perch just outside the back sliding door

(I didn't get a photo of the fox this time, but here's a photo of him from Sunday, sunning himself in our yard again. My fat black cat, from the photo above this one, was also sunning himself in the yard, about 20 feet away. They seem to just ignore each other, which is pretty smart on both their parts. After doing some research, I've determined he is a Gray Fox, and adults only get up to about 15 pounds. My fatty cat is 18 pounds, and while a little shorter, he's definitely a lot more solid than the fox. Plus, the more I've thought about it, the less concerned I am about them fighting. Our neighbors have let their cats roam free for years without any issues, so I'm just going to hope for the best, that they'll all realize they're too evenly matched to bother fighting.)

5:35pm - Begin working on the HTML content for the latest product launch I'm still awaiting approval on
5:50pm - Price change proposal comes back, prep old vs new price list, have database manager update pricing in 2 databases, and request a product mix with updated pricing
6:20pm - Back to working on HTML email, complete it, pending uploading the content to our server and inserting links (still waiting on final content approval)

(ooh, HTML code, exciting!)

6:45pm - Begin working on HTML email for Canadian price change, while waiting for the product mix to come back
7:05pm - Take a call from a sales manager, looking for sales numbers on his latest promo, run promo code report, email it to him
7:25pm - Receive international mixes I was waiting on, send out two international versions of the same product announcement I sent this morning
7:45pm - Take another call from a sales manager, push back on why we won't approve them adding $80k to their dealer's program without an upside, specifically, increasing their gross sales goal for the year
7:55pm - Respond to a few more emails, and send out some follow ups for things I still need for tomorrow, including the mix for the Canadian price change and Product Manager approval on the new product launch that needs to go out in the morning
8:10pm - Sign off my computer, commute upstairs and "make" dinner (Healthy Choice Herb Crusted Fish, 270 calories and 1 cup of wine, 184 calories)
8:20pm - Dinner is ready just in time to watch Glee on our DVR (starting 20 minutes late means we can fast forward through the commercials). I'm multitasking and trying to catch up on 2 weeks of Google reader as quickly as I can, since I really hate to 'mark all as read'

9pm - More TV watching, and spending time with my husband while we're both on our computers. I'm uploading pictures for this blog post, and another in progress cooking post

9:47pm - Have an evening snack of 1 cup of Orville Redenbacher's Smart Pop (17 calories), log dinner and snack calories in Fitbit

(A screenshot of my Fitbit tracker for Tuesday. Not surprisingly, you can see that from all the time spent on the computer, I was sedentary a lot of the day. But it's also pretty cool to see the number of calories burned jump during my tennis lessons. Also, I guess I should have eaten more, since I'm shooting for around 1,200 calories a day on weekdays)

10:22pm - My eyes give out from staring at computer screens all day, so I take a break for some kitty snuggles

(Aww, just look at that little tongue!)

10:30pm - Straighten the kitchen a little
10:45pm - Take my real shower for the day, brush teeth
11pm - In bed in time to watch the Daily Show and Colbert Report, check work emails on my blackberry for anything urgent
1am-ish - Finally fall asleep

So, that was a typical busy-with-work day for me. In December, I'll be logging about 2-3 more hours a day on work, since our biggest trade show of the year is in early January, and I'm in charge of all our promotions for it. But my non-busy days are a whole lot less interesting (sending a ton of follow up emails, and doing laundry, since so much of my job is dependent on other people's inputs). Hopefully I'll get to have a few less busy days over the next few weeks, or else I'm going to have to start blogging on the weekends to keep up!

Have you ever done a 'day in your life' kind of blog post? I'd love for you to share it with me if you have, since I really enjoy reading them!