Waiting to Fall

I'm sure I have mentioned this before...my favorite season is Fall. It didn't use to be, especially growing up. But having boys both born in the autumn months and after living in Hawaii where there wasn't such a season, it has grown to be my favorite. All of August I've been dreaming of those cooler temps, the gorgeous tones of yellow, orange, and red on the trees, wearing sweaters, drinking hot coffee, feeling the crispness in the air, and hearing the crunching of leaves (okay I really could go on forever). I'm anxiously waiting for September 1st so I can break out the fall decor and go purchase mums. In the meantime I decided to do a craft to get me ready for the change, as if I wasn't ready already.

Thanks to Pinterest I stumbled upon this wreath:

 Source

I have seen these yarn wreathes before and didn't think they were all that great.  But for some reason this one stuck out to me.  I couldn't get it out of my mind! I actually laid in bed, as I was trying to go to sleep, thinking about how to execute such a wreath.  And because I'm OCD crazy, the next morning I zipped on over to Hobby Lobby. 

I bought a straw wreath, yarn, felt, yarn needles, and thread...all for $8.18 (did I mention the above is selling for $45?).  Naptime I started wrapping the yarn.  That's when it clicked why this simple wreath is sold for so much, wrapping yarn in an OCD precise, neat way is extremely time consuming. 

I sketched out some leaf shapes for a template to be used on the felt.  That's where it didn't turn out as I had hoped.  Perhaps I didn't have "the" touch that the person who made the one above did.  The next day I remembered I had some fake leaves I had used in last year's decor around the house.  Yep, that made a world of difference.  I used pins to stick them on there; after hours of yarn wrapping I decided I could reuse the base of the wreath at Christmas if I wanted (I was not going through that again!)

Simple and pretty.  The yarn reminds me of a sweater.  I have a cute ribbon that I'm going to use to hang the wreath on one of those removable wall hooks.  I plan on hanging this on our back door that's in our living room.