Making a Clover Wreath

How to Make A Beautiful Clover Wreath Like The One Pictured Above

1. Own a field that is full of alfalfa and red and white sweet clover.
2. Have a son who has a sweet girlfriend who loves to make things.

Our youngest son's girlfriend made this beautiful wreath. After dinner, my husband and I walked with our dogs through the alfalfa field to the top of the hill to our 'crop circle*.' What did we find when we got there?

C. was sitting on the grass, braiding sweet clover into a lovely wreath! What a clever girl!  I was so impressed! 

I'm not really sure how she did it, or I would present a tidy little tutorial. She said that she just 'sorta kept braiding more clover in.' I think it was kind of like doing French braids. Anyway, when she was done, she then inserted the blossoms into the braided green clover/alfalfa wreath.

Presumably, any of you who know how to French braid should be able to do this, providing you have access to something green and growing with long stems and pretty blossoms.

I absolutely love the wreath and wish it would keep forever.

And now, may I introduce our son's girlfriend. She is intelligent, sweet, cute, and we love having her around. She's here often enough now, that I think of the fourth room upstairs as C.'s room.

Yes, I asked her permission to include her photo in a blog post.

* Our 'crop circle' is made by our son when he mows my walking track. He mows the perimeter of the field (so I don't have to take the dogs out on the road) and then mows a nice circle on top of the hill where I like to stop and look at the views in all directions. Sometimes my husband and I take camp chairs to the top of the hill and just sit a while with the dogs, enjoying the weather and watching the cars go by.

You may recognize this photo, but I thought you needed a visual of our hilltop. And besides, I knew you couldn't get enough of my dogs. :-)

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Kids' Ancient Egyptian Headdress and Collar

My friend and I are the craft ladies for VBS at our church this year. The curriculum is from Answers in Genesis, always full of good stuff! Click on their 'Media' tab and go to their 'Video on Demand.' There you will find great video clips you can use with your family, friends, and Sunday School class.

The theme for this week's VBS has been 'craftsmen of ancient Egypt.' Today's craftsman is the goldsmith. We took a little diversion from the assigned craft.  Instead of going with the suggestion in the teacher's manual, we decided to have the kids make Egyptian collars and Headdresses, complete with gold band and gold snakey snake!

First stop was Goodwill, to look for cheap but striped flat sheets. After running them through the washer and dryer, we cut them into squares 29" x 29" (This was guess work.)

Then, I just happened to have a gold picnic table cloth (shiny on one side, flannel on the other) that I had once purchased at Target or Walmart for no more than $5. I cut it into 2" x 25" strips.

Next, 'snakes' for the headdresses were made by tearing about 11 inch sheets of heavy aluminum foil, then rolling each diagonally and squeezing out a little snake head, then twisting the body and making it pointy at the end. After that, the snakes were moved to the floor of the garage where I spray painted them with gold automotive paint. I made certain that the gold would dry completely and not come off on little (or big) hands!

Snakes were wrapped around the gold headband in front and secured by squeezing the foil, or with two staples. After all, the staples will never touch the child's head, for the striped fabric will go on first.

I happened to have some heavy brushed cotton, navy blue, in my stash (Don't we all have a stash of fabric??!) and also another geometric print. Anything would probably work for this, as long as you cut geometric shapes for the kids to use.  I cut a pattern out of cardboard. The collar is about 15 inches across.

Use some contrasting color of like fabric to cut triangles. With a little leftover fabric from the gold tablecloth, I cut tiny squares that the kids could use to decorate their collars. Using Tacky Glue, the kids decorated their collars.

Cut a slit in the corner of each side of the collar and have the kids string either leather or cotton through each slit so they can tie the collars on.

The headdress fabric is placed on the head, the gold band and snake wrapped around the head, then stapled. (NOT to the kid's head). ;-) Cut excess gold fabric from the head band.

There! That's it!  Don't they look cute!!  :-) We had 30 kids who participated, but it's not easy to get 30 ancient Egyptians to assemble for a photo.

This post is linked to We Did It Wednesday