Save or Splurge: Sunflower Wreath

 I love making wreaths for my front door.  I love having something cheerful on my door at all times and realized I didn't really have any great options for August/September.  I have a pretty Fall wreath, but it felt too early to put it out so I'll save it for October/November.

I started looking for inspiration on Pinterest and shopping around on-line.  Most sunflower wreaths I saw for purchase were around $100.  That's way over my wreath budget and I knew I could make one for cheaper than that.  Here were my inspiration screen shots all from Pinterest

 I loaded up the kids and we headed to Hobby Lobby.  That isn't the most kid friendly store in the world, but we made it work.  Their tiny carts only hold one big kid and there's no way a car seat would fit in there.  Plus there aren't any cart stalls in their parking lot so I'd have to lug both kids into the store.  I opted to do a stroller and have a pep talk with Olive about being a big girl so she's walk with me.  It's new territory for us to have her walking around freely in a store.  She's learning how to stay with us and to keep her hands to herself so I chalked the whole thing up to a good learning experience.  Both kids were good as gold so it was a fun outing for all of us.

All of the Fall decor and Fall florals were 40% off last week so I stocked up on them.  I picked out the wreath first and then started gathering flowers and other fun things for the wreath.  I used my Hobby Lobby app coupon to save 40% off the grape vine wreath since it was full price and then almost everything else I got was on sale, too.  

I got all the greenery, flowers, wreath and such for $42!!

5 large flowers, 3 sets of small sunflowers and several different varieties of greenery.  I used the leaves that were on the sunflower stems to add touches of green instead of buying additional greenery.  I also used some burlap ribbon that I purchased from Sams in the Spring.  I already had hot glue and a glue gun so that part was free.

The finished product!  

I love how it turned out, love the price and love driving up to my house to see this cheerful wreath on the door.  Olive told me, "I fink it has too many flowers" but I think that was mostly because she was hoping I'd let her keep some sunflowers to play with.  She helped me make the wreath and I gave her jobs like pulling flowers off the stem, let her cut up leaves I wasn't using and had her help me count things.  She loved it and I kept the glue gun far away from her since I can barely manage to do a project without burning myself.

It's not perfect, but I felt good about crafting for an hour during Fletcher's nap time and it felt good to spend my time making something pretty for the house.  I've mostly spent my free time unpacking lately so this was just the change of pace I needed.

Do you like to make or buy things to hang on your front door?

Other deal tips for wreaths: I've purchased wreaths in the off season on clearance, bought monogrammed seasonal things off of Groop Dealz and bought wreaths and Goodwill to redo for a great deal.