A Little Americana, Just in Time

As I mentioned last week that I had an Easter wreath hanging on my pantry door. Normally I'm all over holidays like bells on bob-tails, but I just forgot. Maybe because my spring-summer decor is still pretty lacking. Despite my procrastinating, I figure what better time than the present (except maybe two months ago) to get around to the current holiday.

I kept switching between the idea of a generic, seasonless bit of swag to hold us over for whenever there's no holiday near (or I am just lacking the motivation decorations) and something perfect for the summer months, specifically Independence Day. Sure enough, I settled on something neutral, but with the ability to punch it up.

I give you, my AmeRicana wreath:

Pow, right in the kisser.

I honestly had no idea what I was after when I ventured into my local Michaels. All I knew is that I didn't want to spend too much time/money if it would be July-exclusive, but I didn't want it to be underwhelming if it turned out to be more permanent.

The balance I struck was a more labor intensive basic wreath that can be updated in a few minutes for whatever holiday comes my way (strangely, I believe Labor Day is next, then Halloween).  And since it's me, "labor intensive" still loosely translates to about an hour.

It's basically a grapevine wreath, a little wooden scrolly doo-dah (technical term, I'm sure), and an R covered in moss. So, like $5 + a new pack of hot glue sticks and some old paint.

This was an example of my favorite type of DIY: super simple. I just painted the scrolly doo-dah a light champagney-silver, hot glued moss onto a wooden initial, and glued it all together. Or for you picture folks:

Gluing the moss onto the R was the trickiest, most time consuming piece. I just kept piling moss on there until no wood was visible. I applied it in teeny, tiny little patches and at the end it looked kindy hairy and gross, with hot glue strings everywhere.

Then I trimmed down all the extra moss and hot glue strings with a pair of scissors and the R looked like this:

Then I just glued the scroll onto the back of the wreath, painted side down. Once the glue dried, I flipped it over and glued the R onto the center of the scroll.

The final, holiday-free version looks like this:

The real pow comes from the 4th elements: simply some red, white, and blue fake flowers (about $10, but I got another wreath out of them) and a little red birdy. I just cut the flowers close tho there base (leaving about 1/2 - 1 inch of stem, and pushed it through the wreath.

Here's one more for good measure:

There you have it: our house pantry door is now Easter-free and summer ready!