this is how they do it

I so wanted to retire the tired looking fake evergreen wreath on our kitchen door for something more fun and with more color. Enter inspiration from the internet. And the bonus is that it looks good from both sides of the door!, unlike the evergreen wreath where all we saw was the wire form. This project couldn't be easier and I encourage you to give it a try with your own kids, I think you'll love watching your kids have fun and your kids will love you even more for letting them do the project all by themselves.

Now on to the tutorial, courtesy my project-loving precious little elves. FYI...all photos snapped with my iPhone so they're not awesome, but that's okay.

Little did I know that this would be the most perfectly fun Sunday evening advent calendar activity. The girls absolutely loved it and soon realized that they could spin the ornaments onto the hanger, which made the process that much "funner." Notice the concentration on Victoria's face. 

And Smoky had even more fun than the girls did with the empty ornament containers and multitude of balls scattered about. Just like a kid, the most unexpected things bring the greatest joy.

Our ornaments are from Hobby Lobby, on sale, and are left over from our Pottery Barn lantern inspiration project. You might say that we have a lot of red in our home decor plan this year. Love it!

FYI - I'll be looking for some fun pink and blue ornaments to go on sale after Christmas so I can make one of these to use when we celebrate the girl's birthday's next year, much like the inspiration wreath.

One of my girls loves pink, one loves blue and Mommy loves them both!

It's times like these that I am reminded by the saying that it's not how much you spend on them, it's how much time you spend with them that counts. This hour together, just me and my girls, was a truly joyful and memory-filled time for me. And I couldn't help but think of the times when Zach and I crafted together, wondering if he was having fun or not. I'm going to believe that he did.

NOTES  |  No need to worry if your hanger doesn't bend into a perfect circle, ours didn't and it ended up just perfect. We used a heavier weight wire hanger and Gordon suggested we use a wimpy hanger next time just to make the joining of the ends of the hanger together at the end a bit easier. I couldn't do it, so Mr. wRight had to step in with his huge musskells. 

Also, our balls are all the same size, just 3 different patterns of red with just a few mini balls thrown in because I already had them.  Oh, and we didn't hot glue our ornament tops on as suggested. These are shatterproof ornaments anyway, so I deleted that step since the girls were doing this project themselves.