Making Grapevine Wreaths at The Mansion

We made a mess today at the Mansion.  There were bits and pieces of dried flowers everywhere.  But Allyssa who vacuumed it up was good natured about it.

And we made some beautiful wreathes.

All the flowers that I’ve been drying the whole summer were used up.  We used big bundle of sage and a few other flowers  from my garden.  But most of them were  the flowers that Jon bought at the florist to take pictures of.

Betty knew what she was doing, she’s made flower arrangements before.  I didn’t get a picture of her wreath, but she brought some pipe cleaners and ribbon that she had in her room,  to share with everyone.

Rachel hung her wreath on her door as soon as she finished it.

Mary was uncertain the whole time she worked on her wreath, but she knew what she wanted.  It has a vibrant and bountiful feeling.

Art wasn’t interested in making a wreath, so I gave him one of the coloring pages and a blue marker.  “Because you’re wearing  blue,” I told him.

Art has memory issues and sometimes has a hard time concentrating.  But he picked up on the idea of blue, and put it into his drawing.  It became a collage when he pulled the blue Oreo wrapper out of his pocket and glued it onto his drawing.

I was feeling down when I left The Mansion.  I think it was the past couple of weeks catching up with me.  Lately my dreams have been nightmares, and I struggled in my studio this morning.  The upcoming holidays don’t help and being at the Mansion, I feel the loss of the place it used to be.

But looking at the pictures I took and writing about my class brought back the truth of the hour.  It was a sweet time with a lot of enthusiasm and good work.   And it lifted me up a touch.

Before I left, Claudia asked me to help her hang her wreath on the door to her room.   The halls are packed  with Christmas decorations and a tree, decorated in blue, stands outside Claudia’s room.  She looked at it and smiled when we passed it.

Claudia was eager for me to see where her room was. I’ve known her many years, but had never seen it before.   There was already a nail on her door and on either side of it were two of Claudia’s cat colorings.

We both stepped back to look at the wreath   “It looks perfect there,” I said and she agreed.