Why I Oughta...

I put together my first (ever) evergreen wreath this weekend.  Using a mix of Fraser Fir limbs from our tree and some Cypress branches and boxwoods from our yard, I created a few dozen 'bunches' of materials.  I watched one wreath-making video (Thanks, Garden Answer) and sort-of figured out how to make the wreath using those 'piles' or 'bunches'.   Nat brought home Silver Dollar Eucalytus and Magnolia leaves from Trader Joes (one bunch of each) and I cut those up and stacked them on each pile.   From there, it was just winding floral wire around the grapevine frame to attach the pile/bunch to the frame.  I moved around the frame, eventually closing-in the whole thing.   Below is a photo of the (my first) wreath hanging on our front door. I'm already thinking about what to do next time and what I like about this first effort. I like the layering and the contrast from the cypress and fir and eucalyptus.  I also like the contrasting colors...

This year, I had* Equation Boy/Man in our Christmas Grab-bag.  (By 'had', I mean that in my mind, I was to buy/build for him because I bought/built for my brother-in-law Shaun last year.  It appears that the guys-only Grab-bag may have fallen apart, but I'll soldier on, alternating between the two of them anyway.) Earlier this year, Equation Boy/Man had a really nice basketball hoop installed in his new driveway and I've spent many a late afternoon down at their place playing hoops with my nephew.  Everytime we play, the balls were scattered across the yard or garage.     Bingo!  I knew what I could build him - a rolling basketball rack/cart. I started with red cedar 4X4 beams for the corners.  The rest of the pieces are cedar 2X4s.  An adult basketball has a (just shy of) 10" diameter, so I made the rack 40" long to hold 4 balls.  3 levels means 12 adult balls. I'll have to grab a photo of the finished product (because I forgot to!)...

One of the Christmas presents we gave our family was personalized outdoor door mats.   Using this post by Martha Stewart as my inspiration , I set out to make mats with names on them - while Martha's uses numbers.  We started with plain mats from Ikea.   The ones we bought are called Trampa and run less than $10 each. Just like M artha say s, I first started with creating a border.  For these, I used blue painters tape to make an edge that would remain un-painted.  From there, because I was doing names, not numbers, I had to create a stencil.  I did this by printing out the name on paper, affix it to a piece of posterboard and pricking holes through the posterboard to create an outline of the name.  Using a pair of sharp, small scissors, I cut the letters out - leaving behind custom stencil. I popped the stencil in the middle of the mat and taped everything down. Then came the easy part:  spray painting the mats.  Being careful to prote...