mops december craft

this month our mentor moms put on an "advent by candlelight" dinner for us.  we try to offer a simple craft but i think in future years their won't be one because it distracts from the evening and the mentor moms want this to be a break for the steering team.

yesterday i spent over 8 hours dying almost 900 clothes pins green and 900 wooden beads red.  i thought that this would be easily (and quickly) done in a bucket outside but with temperatures in the 20s, this was not an option.  so i did them all in a pot on my stove while i baked cookies.

and then i tried to reuse our wire from last month to string them together to save an additional expense but about an hour before the meeting i discovered that this was not strong enough to keep a circle shape and it looked more like an oval when hung on the wall.  so then i started to have a stress meltdown while trying to figure it out while the kids were at top volumes - manning crying because he was so sick that his eye was oozing, maddux' nose was oozing, madelyn was crying because she was tired and mason was just loud and happy to be alive.  ahhhhh!!!  i was so stressed and loosing it by the time i left for the meeting that i was on the verge of tears.

as a last minute save, i decided to just bring paper bags with me and explain to everyone what had happened and that the wreaths would be much better if they just put their supplies into a paper bag, took them home and made them with a wire hanger.  they did think that the craft was cute.  i suggested that it was good for cards or for displaying all of the christmas artwork that comes home.  we actually had less people tonight than expected so i was able to let everyone take a lot more supplies so that their wreaths could be much larger (and nicer) than the one pictured above.  here is a link to how this was supposed to work...

it is always a bummer when things don't work out the way you planned.  love.