Holiday Blues: after Christmas Wreath

So upon packing up our holiday decorations & bringing in the New Year, one of our little girls has been sad about the lack of decorations & excitement about the house.  To help with this we hit the after Christmas craft store clearance & have made a wreath to celebrate, well, January!

Winter Chalkboard Wreath

Materials Needed:

Grapevine wreath (or some other environmentally friendly wreath)

Ribbon & accessories for decorating

A strand of Battery operated lights

Piece of wood

Chalkboard paint

Wire

This had to be the thriftiest project we have ever completed. The wreath &the LED snowflake lights were on 70% clearance at our local craft store.  We had the ribbon lying around the house, and of course the piece of wood is from our recycled wood pile!

First we wrapped the wreath with ribbon & lights. This gave us an idea of what size we wanted out piece of wood to be. After cutting the recycle wood & painting it with chalkboard paint (I would recommend two coats), we drilled four holes in each corner of the wood to secure it to the wreath.  You can secure with ribbon and omit the wire as well. We chose wire since it was already on hand & helped secure the chalkboard to the wreath more securely than ribbon.  We also used the ribbon & wire to hide & secure the lights battery pack behind the chalkboard.

You could get really creative with this project.  We chose to add the chalkboard to allow us to celebrate different winter themes. Here are some of the fun things we have written on our chalkboard wreath:

• Happy New Year!
• Happy Winter
• Time for School!
• It’s Cold! Brrr
• Daddy’s Home!
• Welcome Winter
• 2011
• Let it Snow! (not that it snows in Florida –lol)

Of course there are the traditional things you could write: Welcome or your family’s last name, etc.  We love turning on our lights on at night, especially we when are going out & coming back to the snowflake lit wreath.  This simple wreath definitely got rid of our little girl’s holiday blues!

Happy Winter!