Easy Easter Wreath

Spring is in the air, well summer really. Us hearty Minnesotans, yes I am starting to identify more with the folks native to the great white north rather than those of my native Chicago, manage to embrace the outdoors even is subzero temps but when spring arrives we come truly alive. Unusual March temps in the 80's have us all dizzy with spring fever. I also find my need to create is much stronger when the sun shines again, maybe it's the whole rebirth thing that spring brings about. I found myself anxious to take down the Christmas lights and joyfully cleaning out the gutters yesterday. Normally a disgusting task I was just happy to be up on the roof without fear of launching myself 20 feet into the air with a quick misstep onto some ice.
After removing the remnants of Christmas and winter paraphernalia from our house it just looked so sad and naked and colorless. I went digging through my box of seasonal decor and discovered a plethora a pretty plastic Easter eggs. Not having any bushes to decorate or trees with branches low enough to hang them from I thought...hmmm....a wreath. I scoured the town high and low to find a simple wreath form that wouldn't break the bank as it would be covered by pretty plastic eggs. Ah ha, Goodwill. If you haven't already discovered go check out your local Goodwill. I was elated with the wide array of wonderful Easter decorations and once loved floral arrangements and slightly tattered wreaths that were available. I managed to score a sad little grape vine wreath that had obviously seen better days. The clerk agreed $.99 was a fair price and with two bags of lime green plastic Easter grass at $.49 each I was ready to go! 

Here's what you'll need:

1 12" diameter wreath form of some sort
1 bag of plastic Easter grass
An assortment of sizes and colors of plastic Easter eggs
A hot glue gun and glue sticks

First using the hot glue, stick generous amounts of the Easter grass on your wreath form so as to cover it completely. I used one large egg to help mash the grass into the glue so I didn't burn my fingers.
Next glue individual eggs to the form/Easter grass. You'll want to vary the sizes and apply glue to both the side contacting the wreath form and sides adjoining any other eggs.

And voila! You have a pretty, weather proof decoration! This was a fun little craft project and something that should last for quite a long time, unlike the 80 degree weather we are experiencing in March!

Lost and Found

We are bombarded daily by celebrity successes and equally their failures, their "innate" talents thrown in our faces. We probably all know someone who seems to be able to achieve the impossible with very little effort and we all surely know someone who can just never seem to get it together. Most of us, however; probably fall somewhere in between, never quite reaching the celebrity we surely thought we were destine to attain as children and tired of the pitfalls that keep landing in front of us. I've wrestled most of my life with secretly wanting to be the best, to please my parents and have them  be proud of my successes and accomplishments, to please my boss, my coworkers, and my life partner.

I've always wanted to have that one God-given talent that everyone recognizes and falls back in pure awe that it's me with this talent. Then the other day a simple post on Pinterest struck me to the core. Now you are probably wondering why the heck this post contains a photo of Albert Einstein, right? It was a quote of his that suddenly made it all so clear to me. We need not have a special talent capable of winning a high-school talent contest or work tirelessly to perfect a skill we are sure will make us special but rather accepting that a talent in and of itself is being curious about the world. It struck me like lightning that I am a seeker of experiences, that my talent isn't tangible, it isn't to produce wonderful food, or beautiful art, or play guitar. My talent is to feel, to produce joy, to find out why, to add to my catalog of life's experiences.

As I get older I have realized through the many wonderful and sometimes not so wonderful people in the world and the vast array of experiences both good and bad I have had that the world is truly magnificent, that it offers up every kind of experience one could ever want if we only open ourselves up to it. I may be wrong but if I take history as a lesson so many people take the world for granted, choosing only to see the doom and gloom brought to us on the nightly news or to let the misfortunes of others or maybe ourselves derail us immediately upon their arrival.

The more I learn about Albert Einstein the more I identify with him. I may not be a genius however he did not identify himself as such either. The quote that struck me is the quote to the right.

That was my AH HA moment. The moment I realized it is ok not to have just one God-given talent, which sometimes I think may be more of a curse than anything, just one talent you can do better than almost everyone you know but then maybe the rest of your life is lacking and less than perfect. Maybe it is better to just be curious about the world and to feel fulfilled by getting to know it, its experiences, and its people.

Albert Einstein, no doubt, has hundreds of popular quotes which I am sure many were taken out of context though I don't care if this one was or not. It speaks to me and the more I learn about this man the more I love him. His moral code, his passion to understand, accept, and choose his own God, and of course his fierce commitment to knowledge and understanding.

Today I breathe, I breathe because I know who I am and that person is ever changing, and that is OK. There is nothing to loose in having a talent just as there is nothing to loose in discovering that you have none, finding out that your talent is simply being curious about everything, I'll take that in a heart-beat.