Wait Til Your Father Gets Home

{Yellow & Teal Burlap Wreath}

May 24, 2013 by meredith · 11 Comments

There are lots of reasons why I was so excited to make a new wreath for our front door this month.

1. We got the house {and the front door} painted! Woo hoo {finally}!!

2. I’m on baby watch and knew I needed to get something fresh and new hung up before the little one arrives {wreaths will not be a top priority for a few months}.

3. I had a stash of beautiful, colored burlap from my friends at Online Fabric Store that I’ve been itching to use.

4. My new friends at FloraCraft so generously sent me a few 16″ foam wreath forms that I could not wait to play with either!

To make the wreath pictured above I used the following materials:

16″ STYROFOAM Brand Wreath Form from FloraCraft

teal, yellow, and plain burlap from Online Fabric Store {maybe 1/4 yard of each}

teal & yellow fabric from my stash {mostly purchased at Hobby Lobby}

(2) 15 ft. rolls of burlap & yellow polka dot wire ribbon {Hobby Lobby}

floral pins

hot glue gun/glue sticks

Step One

Cut a strip of plain burlap to wrap around the wreath form. That way all the white part is covered up! Once you’ve got the form covered, start bubbling your wire ribbon and pinning in place to the wreath. There is no perfect method to this, just do whatever feels right to you! Each bubble should only require one pin.

After you’ve got the entire wreath covered with the burlap & polka dot ribbon, you’re ready to start adding pops of solid yellow burlap throughout the wreath.

Step Two

Cut a few 3 x 3 inch squares of yellow burlap. Fold the corners in so they all meet in the middle, place a floral pin through them, and pin in place throughout the wreath.

I just kept adding until I felt the wreath looked full enough and the yellow was fairly evenly dispersed.

Remember, you’re working with burlap, so things aren’t going to be absolutely perfect…that’s OKAY!

Step Three

I wanted to add one more color to the wreath to really make it pop and decided to raid my fabric stash to find some great teal fabrics {all different textures and patterns}. I knew that I wanted to add some fabric flowers to the wreath and got busy making a few.

To make my fabric flowers, I cut 4 x 25 ” strips of fabric. Fold the fabric length-wise so that it is now 2 x 25″ and hot glue the open end shut {you could also run your sewing machine down the open end, but since this was just going outside, and I didn’t feel like breaking out my sewing machine, I simply hot glued it}. Once the open end is glued together, cut fringe on the folded side {careful not to cut all the way through}.

Step Four

Once the fringe is cut, it’s time to start creating the actual flower. To make the “bud” I grabbed a small piece of a contrasting fabric and began wrapping and hot gluing the fabric strip around it.

You can see that by cutting the fringe in the fabric strip, it creates the illusion of petals.

Step Five

Once each flower was finished, I hot glued a floral pin to the back, so that I’d easily be able to add them to my wreath.

And, soon, I had these beauties, ready to be added to the wreath…

Step Six

I placed each flower on the wreath once I got it hung up on the door.

I’m loving the two colors, especially against our new red front door. The rest of the house is painted yellow, so this yellow & teal wreath goes beautifully with our newly painted house!

What have you done outside to prep for Summer?!

I’ll be linking up at these parties!

About Meredith Hazel

Meredith is a stay at home mom and has been blogging since 2012. She started Wait 'Til Your Father Gets Home as a creative outlet in between nap times for her little one. Wait 'Til Your Father gets home is a combination of crafting tutorials, DIY projects, recipes and, sharing some of life's journey along the way.

Filed Under: Crafting, Decorating, DIY Tagged With: burlap, fabric, fabric flowers, summer, teal, wreath, yellow

{Keep Calm & Link Up # 42}

May 23, 2013 by meredith · 8 Comments

Welcome back to Keep Calm and Link Up! What a great party we had last week! You guys are just so impressive!

I hope you’re having great week and that you’re getting ready for summer! Are your kids out of school yet?

Let’s get this party started shall we?

Last week’s most viewed link up was DIY Dahlia Flower Decor by The Happy Scraps:

So pretty! I want to make this!

If you missed last week’s features see them here.

Party on!

About Meredith Hazel

Filed Under: Link Party Tagged With: features, keep calm & link up, link party

{6 DIY Jar Ideas}

May 22, 2013 by meredith · 2 Comments

Happy Wednesday! Time to celebrate YOU! Yes YOU! Thanks for linking up to our party every week, you guys just blow it out of the water every time!

~This week’s features are: DIY Jar Ideas, and they’re brought to you by Barbara at Chase the Star~

Healthy Cup of Dirt!

Mason Jar with a Spout

feature1 (1)

Dad’s Snack & Surf Kit

Pig Pickin’ Cake in a Jar

Pretty Blue Mason Jar

feature1 (1)

Dried Herbs and Spices in a Jar

Come back tomorrow night for the party! If you want more chances to be featured, visit our group blog, The Creative Headquarters and submit your latest and greatest creation (or even something older and fabulous!).

CHQ Signature

About Meredith Hazel

Filed Under: Link Party Tagged With: features, gifts, jars, link party, mason jars

{Quilt Along Week 2: Cutting & Planning the Quilt}

May 22, 2013 by meredith · 3 Comments

Some materials for this quilt were provided to me by OnlineFabricStore.net. They are a fabulous company to work with, and as always, all opinions are 100% my own!

So far, this quilting thing has been pretty easy! Granted, I haven’t done any actual sewing or quilting yet, but what I have done up to this point, I’ve done pretty well if I do say so myself. During the second week of the Quilt Along, hosted by Becoming Martha and Create.Craft.Love, I worked on cutting my fabric pieces and then planning out my quilt top.

Here again is most of my beautiful fabric. I love it even more after getting it all cut and pieced together, but I’m jumping ahead of myself here. Before I began to cut anything at all, I had a nice little afternoon of ironing. After ironing for what seemed like forever, I got out my brand new self healing cutting mat, acrylic rulers, and rotary cutter courtesy of my good friends at Online Fabric Store. I also jotted down a list of how many blocks I should have from my fat quarters and the small strips between them.

You’ll recall that this is the quilt I’m making.

To create the blocks in the middle, you need to cut 88 pieces of fabric measuring 4.5 inches by 7.5 inches. {You will be able to cut eight blocks out of each fat quarter.} The easiest way I can describe to cut your fabric is to cut 4.5 inch strips, then stack each strip {you’ll have four of them}, measure out 7.5 inches, and cut through the entire stack.

Your rotary cutter can handle it, trust me! You will get two 7.5 inch sections {through 4 layers of fabric = 8 blocks} out of this. There will be about 6 inches extra.

Soon, you’ll have a stack of pretty 4.5 inch by 7.5 inch rectangles for your quilt blocks!

To cut out the small rectangles between the larger blocks I needed 72 pieces measuring 1.5 inches by 4.5 inches. To do this, I cut 8 strips measuring 4.5 inches in width. Then I simply stacked all 8 pieces on top of each other and cut ten 1.5 inch sections.

Once I cut all the rectangles {both large and small}, came the intimidating part for me, cutting the sashing, borders, binding, and backing. For the quilt I’m making, I needed the following:

Borders – Cut (2) 6.25 inch by 87 inch pieces for the long edges. Cut (2) 6.25 inch by 67 inch pieces for the short edges.

Sashes – Cut (11) 4 inch by 55.5 inch pieces.

Backing - Cut your fabric exactly in half.

Binding – Cut (9) 2.5 inches by 42 inch strips.

I was so nervous because the strips were just so long, and I was afraid that I’d get crooked somewhere along the way. Luckily, I took my time and made straight cuts on the first try with no wasted fabric. Yes, I’m as shocked as you are my friends!

Below is all the fabric for my quilt, ready to be pieced together! For my borders, sashes, and backing, you’ll remember I’m using Michael Miller Dumb Dot in Charcoal from my friends at Online Fabric Store.

Before I could begin actually piecing my quilt, I needed to plan out my quilt top to format my rectangles how I wanted them to look.

I just started laying out my rows and began with the large rectangles. Each row will contain 7 large rectangles separated by 6 small rectangles. There will be 12 rows separated by a sash. {You will only use 84 out of the 88 large rectangles.}

I laid out the ENTIRE quilt top and moved rectangles around until I liked how it looked! *Note, the sashes will appear longer than the rectangle rows…that’s okay! Once you sew the rectangle row together, it will be the same length as the sashing!

Once I had it all laid out, I began to collect each row and kept them in order {so that piecing later on would be faster}.

I soon had a stack of rectangle rows, with sashing in between {going another direction}. I collected my smaller rectangles separately.

The next part of my quilting adventure involves piecing the top of my quilt. Stay tuned to see how that process goes for me!

I may be linking up at these parties!

About Meredith Hazel

Filed Under: Baby, Quilting, Sewing Tagged With: baby, quilt along, quilting, sewing

{Nap Time Mommy Tip}

May 21, 2013 by meredith · 2 Comments

Hello to all the friends and followers of Wait Til Your Father Gets Home. It’s so great to be here today! I’m Marilyn of 4 You With Love and like Meredith, I’m a Mommy blogger. However, my babies are “big babies”: my daughter just graduated from Ohio University, my older son is finishing up his 2nd year at Ohio University, and my yo{ungest son is finishing up his sophomore year in high school.

When I signed up to be a guest contributor here at Wait Til Your Father Gets Home, I was first thinking about sharing a recipe, craft tutorial, or knitting project but then I had an “A-HA” moment. I thought, “Meredith has a little one with one on the way so how about I share a ‘mommy tip’ with her readers”.

Okay, a little quiz first. What is the phrase that mom’s love and toddlers dislike with a passion? Would you like a hint? Okay, I’ll give you one. It happens in the afternoon usually soon after lunch. It’s….

Yes, the dreaded nap time. Now before I share my tip with you today, I’d like to give you a bit of background on my three kids.

My Youngest

He is 5.5 years younger than my daughter and 3.75 years younger than my older son. We live .75 miles from the elementary school which means my kids were “walkers”. So between my middle child going to preschool and my oldest in elementary school, my youngest never had the pleasure of taking naps. So, he just learned to pace himself, slow and steady, and he is that way to this day in everything he does.

My Middle Child

My older son has always LOVED sleeping and contrary to most babies & toddlers, he was not an early riser. He always slept in until 10:00 am and always LOVED his afternoon nap. And just like my youngest, he is this way to this day. Sleeping is one of his favorite past-times and he is truly not a morning person.

My Oldest

My daughter is my oldest and is one who lives her life to the fullest. She is also the one who sees potential and possibility at every turn: the optimist. As a toddler, she would wake up in the morning and even if it was raining cats and dogs, she would say, “let’s go Mommy, it’s a pretty day!”. This love of life meant that she hated naps because if she slept, she just might miss something. However, she lived her life so large that without a nap, from 4:00 on was miserable for her and everyone around her.

So, today I’d like to share with you how I got my beautiful daughter to take a nap EVERY afternoon without fights, tears, or struggles. I had a secret weapon and here it is.

Yup, this Playskool tape recorder. ”How does this get a child to nap?” you ask? It’s really simple.

I first determined that even if my daughter didn’t sleep, if she rested quietly for 45 minutes to 1 hour she would be recharged enough to last the rest of the day. Most of our kids (music) tapes were15-20 minutes in length so if she listened to a tape 3 times, she would have rested long enough.

So, every day at nap time, I would tuck my daughter in and tell her, “You don’t have to sleep but you have to rest with your eyes closed. Once you have listened to your tape three times, your rest is over and you can come downstairs.”

Well, you’ll never guess what happened every time. I would hear the tape play through one time. Then I would hear it play a second time and then……..complete silence for an hour or so! Then, I would hear the tape play through for a third time. My daughter had no idea that she had drifted off to sleep and I always had a “warning” that she would be up soon when I heard the music play that third time! A win-win for everyone!

Now, I know they don’t sell these tapes anymore but I would think you could burn a CD and create the same scenario for your little one.

Thanks for allowing me to visit today. I’d love for you to stop by 4 You With Love sometime. I have a Spa Day Saturday series where you’ll find some DIY spa recipes, you’ll find some free knitting patterns along with crafting and DIY tutorials and much more. In June I am also kicking off a spice party that a long with other things, includes monthly and seasonal spice giveaways! I hope to see you soon!

Thanks so much to Marilyn for that awesome tip! I might just have to try that with my toddler once naps become an issue for him {hoping they don’t, but you never know!}