It's beginning to SMELL alot like Christmas...

I have really been getting in the Christmas spirit lately. Yes, yes, I know, it is not even Thanksgiving yet, but I truly cannot help it. When I still lived at home, I was the child who begged and begged to decorate the house with Christmas on November 1st. My mom had one rule regarding Christmas- I could decorate the house on my birthday, November 29 (which usually also fell right after Thanksgiving). I don't know what excited me more as a child, my birthday, or the fact that I got to decorate on that day? Now, living out of my mom's house, and in the home I share with my husband, I am the adult who begs and begs to decorate the house on November 1st :) My husband quickly learned my mom's rule and has instated it in our home as a rule as well. He also often says that "Christmas threw up" in our home after I am done with it, but it doesn't faze me one bit!

My mom came to visit this weekend to help supervise the pouring of the concrete for our back patio and we spent all day Sunday shopping and creating crafts for Christmas! I got the idea for a Cinnamon Stick Wreath on Pinterest (imagine that!) and had been hooked on the idea ever since.

We ended up making three wreaths (one for each of us and one for my Godmother since she wasn't able to come on this trip with my mom), and we have two more in production. Below you will see our finished product, then step by step instructions. I love the way they came out and even better, my house smells DELISH!

First, we took a  12" floral frame from Michael's ($1.99 each) and used some stain we already had at home to stain it (you will want to stain the front and both edges).You will also want to stain the back if you are putting your wreath in front of a mirror or window, as we later learned.

Here is the wreath all stained. We used a foam brush we already had and just some brown stain. We wanted the floral wreath form to blend in more with the cinnamon sticks in case a little showed through the sticks. If you are ok with the lighter brown showing through, you don't need to stain it at all.

This is my mama's wreath. She realized she needed to stain the back once she got home as she was hanging it on a mirror. She carefully flipped over her wreath and stained the back. I'm pretty sure she used some Old English furniture polish. So, like I said earlier, you can use anything to stain your wreath forms!

We bought these cinnamon sticks at Michael's also. They were originally $4.99/pack, on sale for $2.49/pack with 20, 7" sticks per pack. We were worried at first because they did not smell that great in the store. After sitting on the floor (me, not my Mama...) and smelling each pack, I snapped one of the sticks in half and voila, delicious cinnamon smell!!! We figured that for the size sticks and wreath we wanted to make, we would snap each in half. We had figured out earlier that we needed about 200 sticks per wreath and we also wanted some sticks for other projects, so we bought 16 packs, just to be safe, which cost us $39.84 total.

So, next, we took each pack of sticks and snapped each one in half. This sounds more tedious than it actually was. It really did not take us any time at all and it really made my house smell super yummy! A few of them were very hard to snap, so thank goodness I have a handy super manly and strong Hubby to help us! :)

 Here are all the sticks snapped in half and ready to be glued to our wreaths!

Next, we took the glue gun and went to town. There was really no rhyme or reason to the rest of the project, we sort of just grabbed the sticks and glued them to the wreath form. We switched it up a bit and glued some curly side up, some curly side down, some on their sides, etc. We also didn't worry about the first layer being perfect since we knew we would have to do a few layers to make it look like we wanted.

 Me in action :)

 Mama in action :)

Halfway through! You can see that the sticks won't perfectly line up next to each other. Just go with it and let it fan out in a pretty little circle. You will be able to fill in all the gaps with the next layers.

 We had a lot of fun with this project, can you tell?

 Here is one of our wreaths after one layer of cinnamon sticks. From here, we kept adding sticks until they looked good to us. We seriously could still probably be sitting in my kitchen working on this, but we just got to a point where they looked great and stopped! It was interesting because my mom tended to grab more of the skinnier sticks and I was drawn to the fatter ones so our wreaths are a little different even though we made them together.

 Peaking through our finished products! We were SO pleased with how they came out!

 Again with our finished wreaths!

 So now, the moment you've all been waiting for... Here is the finished wreath, hanging by some pretty jute binding on the wall over my mantle. I bought the jute for $.99/yard at Hobby Lobby, and used maybe about a yard to hang it. I already had a hook which my stained glass window usually hangs from, so I just took the window down and put the wreath up.

 Side view of the wreath hanging.

 Sooner than later (more specifically, on my birthday), the fall and normal decorations will be replaced by my Christmas garland, glitter reindeer, apothecary jars with pine cones and cinnamon sticks, and eventually even some Christmas cards. For now, I am enjoying the delicious aroma of the cinnamon sticks and my wreath is really getting me in the Christmas mood! (as if I needed any help!!)

 Another shot of the mantle with my new wreath.

I really love the way it came out! I am going to make one for my Mother-In-Law's birthday as her birthday is in December. I am also going to make one for my Sissy, just cuz I love her. :) So to price it out for you, each wreath cost us:

Brown stain: already had

Foam brush: already had

Wreath Form:  $1.99

Approx 3 bags of cinnamon sticks @ $2.49 each: $7.47

Approx 3 glue sticks: purchased for another project

Jute to hang wreath: $1.00

So, for a grand total of $10.46, we have a fabulous edition to your Christmas decorations or a wonderful gift for someone you love!

If you are inspired to make a wreath of your own, I hope you love it as much as I love mine!