Month: December 2007

One of the little handmade things I’m making this year for some of my friends who celebrate Christmas is jingle bell wreaths. I’ve seen these in magazines, and they are super-easy to make.

My first thought was to take apart a wire wreath form and use tin snips to open the circle and push the jingle bells on, but what works a million times better is to just use a wire with a gauge that is loose enough so that it is easily bendable but strong enough so that it holds its shape.

I had a bunch of long copper wire pieces from my orchid growers (they put these in the pots to hold the message card) so we just unbent these:

…and bent it (very easy) into a circle shape:

My wire-nose pliers were used to make a little C loop-back on one end so that the bells wouldn’t slide off, and that’s also what I bent the other end of the wire in to, to close the circle once the bells were on:

I just used regular jingle bells -these are big ones but I bought some smaller ones for other wreaths. They have all different sizes at the craft shop:

I just strung all the bells onto the form, and turned every other one a different direction once they were on the form so that it looked nice. I used tin snips to take off the extra length of wire, then used my little pliers to loop around that C shape on the other end to close it off. This is a small wreath, so I used some nice wide ribbon to hang the wreath:

I put the ribbon right over the closure so it can’t be seen at all.

…I think it turned out pretty nice:

I can’t wait to give these away as little presents!

This weekend, the Arlington home in B’ham was hosting an event called “Christmas at Arlington” where they had local floral designers come in and recreate in flowers and greenery how past Christmases would have appeared. I enjoy seeing how people decorate for holidays, and we had never been to Arlington before, so this was the perfect reason to drive over.

The only thing I really knew about Arlington was that it is the only surviving antebellum home in the area (it was built some time between 1845 and 1850, and B’ham wasn’t developed until after the war). It is here that Union troops planned for the burning of the University of Alabama.

It’s really pretty:

They had some wonderful hosts for the event. Av carried Shug in the Baby Bjorn so he could see everything really well (it’s Shug’s favorite way to go) and it was great. We had the very nicest older gentleman who was our guide through the front of the home, too.

I fell in love with this square grand piano:

This is the dining room. Underneath one end of the table is a switch in the floor which the person at the head of the table could push with their foot to alert the staff if they needed anything.

The house is furnished beautifully, but none of the furnishings are original.

Behind the home is another building where events can be catered (a wedding there on the grounds would be beautiful!).

I couldn’t find a website for Arlington, but there’s a little more about it at the bottom of this page.