Sweet Wreath

My grandpa on my mom's side ("Beeps," another story for another day) has always been one of my #1 fans.  He came to every sporting event, concert, play, and dramatic reading I ever took part in.  And after each one, he would give me a big hug and a peppermint.  Always at least one regular peppermint, and sometimes one of those chewy christmas tree mints if they were available.  He even brought one to each of my graduations!  It's a special tradition to me, and when I saw this wreath on pinterest, I knew I wanted to make one for Beeps:

Source

Henry helped me gather the supplies - a foam wreath, 3 big bags of peppermints, wide red ribbon, glue gun/sticks, and some sort of clear acrylic sealant spray (like this one).  The wreath I bought had squared edges (like this) and was less than $5 at Michael's.  In the example above, she used red hots to fill in all the space between the peppermints.  That seems like a lot of extra work/gluing to me, so I just wrapped the red ribbon around my wreath before gluing the peppermints.  Then it was red between the mints and it gave the glue something better to stick to then styrofoam.  Ideally I would have used straight pins to attach the two ends of the ribbon, but they weren't right in front of me while I was doing this and clear packing tape was, so I used the packing tape.  Worked like a charm.

I was a little nervous to start gluing on the mints, but it is SUPER easy!  They want to stick to the hot glue, and I just held each one on for a few seconds.  It took me about 2 hours total - sounds like the perfect amount of time to watch your favorite holiday movie.  Here is my wreath after I glued on all the mints (I had a handful left out of the three bags):

I love it!  It's a happy wreath.  I really hope Beeps likes it.  I still need to spray it with the acrylic sealant and have my mom (she makes the BEST bows) help me with a red bow.  The mints go all around the outside and inside edges and all along the front, but not the back.  If I were doing it again, I would probably take a few minutes and really think about how to lay out the mints on the front, but this haphazard non-plan turned out ok too.  This would be a great crafty-gift to put together in the 10 days we still have before Christmas!