St Patrick’s Day Decoration – a fun wreath to try!

Making plans to decorate for St Patrick's Day? Not sure where to start?

Let's pretend you have an old Christmas wreath with broken lights, a new set of green mini lights and $5 worth of green things from the Dollar store. What would you do?

You make a St Patrick's Day wreath, naturally.

I was feeling the spirit of the almost-Spring Season and this afternoon, it was showing. I'm confident that the fact that I'm 3/4 Irish on my Dad's side of the family influences my enjoyment of this Holiday - in addition to my affection for corned beef and cabbage.

I also like to re-purpose and save money while making things festive at home.

Here is a list and photos of everything you'll need for the project:

• 24-inch wreath
• 1 strand of 100 green mini lights on green wire
• Assorted St Patrick's day novelties from the dollar store. I bought my stuff at Dollar Tree. So everything really was a dollar. (Don't you hate it when things are $2.97 at the dollar store? Shoot, I can find that at Target.)
• Glue gun and about 4 sticks of glue
• A towel to protect your work surface

Miscellaneous things from the dollar store:

A basic, unlit 24-inch wreath

Cute little plastic hats!

A string of green mini lights

Directions

1. Start with the wreath. This project features a 24 inch wreath but if you want to go larger... just double or triple your decorations and go for it (please email me a photo!). Dave pulled this one out of our Christmas decorations stash. The light set on it is weathered and needs to be replaced. Since we didn't even use it this past year, I've targeted it for re-purposing. Take off the broken strand of lights if you have one on yours. Look for a local metal recycling place to take them ... or consider sending it to our

The light set on it was weathered and needed to be replaced. Since we didn't even use it this past year, I've targeted it for re-purposing. Take off the broken strand of lights if you have the same issue. Look for a local metal recycling place to take them ... or consider sending it to our Christmas lights recycling program.

2. If your wreath has been stuck up in the attic or if it's never been used, a critical first step is to fluff the branches. I pronounce this "floof" at our house. Floof-ing is important because on a good wreath there are several lengths of branches and the small under-layer of arms can pretty easily be smashed down and forgotten. Let's not do that at your house.

Here is a photo of the wreath at the mid-floofing stage. See what a big difference it makes?

Really, anytime you use a wreath or when you pull your Christmas tree out of storage out of storage, this is something you just have to do. If you find it really boring, you can break it up into sections but it's better just to bite the bullet and get it over with. A half glass of red wine could help.

See, my hands are moving so fast, they are blurry.

3. Plug in your set of green lights. I highly recommend green wire as opposed to any color because I do want your end product to be attractive and the green wire blends right in. I plug in my lights so that I can see where I'm light-heavy or light-light. I also use this technique when I put lights on a tree.

4. Install the St Patrick's Day garland if you've found any at your local store. This is the time to install anything that will mess with anything else as you install. (I hope that makes sense.) Just be as logical as possible and layer on your decor in an organized fashion.

How did I forget to take a photo of the garland?.....

5. Now add the other accouterment in order of largest to smallest.

You'll need to have your hot glue gun heated and ready to go.

My hats were my largest item. I secured each hat with a drop of hot glue. I just have to warn you that you should expect to experience a certain amount of hot glue discomfort as you do this project. Well, you may be more coordinated than I am but I've finally just resigned myself that I have to buy "low temp" hot glue guns and hope for the best.

Each hat came with a little piece of elastic - I clipped them off. I'm not really sure who the target customer was in this situation. I mean how many leprechauns shop at the dollar store? Maybe there are some alternative uses of which I am not aware?

I was lucky that there were exactly 5 hats in my pack of hats. If you have an even number of large items in your stash, consider only installing all of them less 1. There is a magical rule in nature and in interior design that you should always have an uneven number of "things". Not 2 vases on the shelf but 3. Three leaves on clover. Now you know why those two frames looked better after you added that third photo of you on a go-cart in the last neighborhood parade.

6. Then I added these oversized foam shamrocks and sparkly horseshoes in two colors of green. I think the two colors just really add dimension, don't you?

7. Install that stuff that are supposed to be sprinkled around the table. I assume around some corned beef and vegetables. I'm not sure I could ever bring myself to do that. There were a variety of shapes - hats, clovers, rainbows, and pots of gold - in various glittery shades of green. I applied the hot glue directly to each little shape and stuck them on any naked branches.

Here is the finished wreath!!

After everything is affixed, congratulations, you are finished. Hang the finished wreath on your door and plug her in!

I sent a photo of this wreath to my friend Jennifer and her response was, "That wreath is cool!!! I just expect a leprechaun to come jumping out from it saying 'where's my hat'".

This technique could also be used to accent garland and you could pop that on your mantle.

I know that St Patrick's is just around the corner but if you hustle, you can have a wreath for this year and then save it for this time next year.

How do you decorate for St Patrick's day?