Rainbow Pen & Pencil Holder

Hi friends, sorry for my absence last Friday...I made the mistake of checking a book out of the library that was part of the "one-week-express" collection which means you only have one week to finish it. I love to read but one week is pushing it. So, other things fell to the wayside, like a blog post! In any case, I finished and returned said book so life can move on! Forward, March!

As crazy as it sounds to those of you who live in other, more reasonable states...the kids here are just finishing up school. Lulu's last day is Tuesday of next week and her brother's is Thursday (ahhh, one of the perks of Middle School, you are done a teensy, weensy bit earlier than the younger kids). So, this project is a gift for my son's teacher. I usually take the kids to paint a mug at the paint-your-own-pottery studio. Then we fill the hand painted mug with new pens, pencils and highlighters. We have given this gift for the last five years and teachers seem to enjoy it because...part of it is handmade, they have cool new pens for next year (woohoo!!) and they can leave the gift on their desk for the summer as opposed to something they have to take home and find a place for. This has been our signature end-of-the-year gift but this year we just plum ran out of time! It takes a week to fire the pottery after you paint it so really, we should have painted sometime in May and yeah, that didn't happen! (I was busy reading perhaps ☺)

So, plan B...I still wanted to give the fun pens and pencils but needed a container. I went looking and found a wire pen holder on sale and thought the shape was interesting.

It just needed some sprucing up. I decided to weave ribbon through the wires.

Disclaimer...I messed up the very bottom row in case you notice that the purple and navy ribbons are going over and under the same wires. Oh... so now you notice. ☺ And yes...that will bother me until the day I die but by the time I noticed, I couldn't easily fix it. Sorry perfectionists! I used glue dots to secure the ribbon ends to each other.
Enter the lovely pens and pencils. Yes, I go a little crazy in this area but I have an incurable LOVE of writing instruments.

 

Welcome home pens and pencils, welcome home!

I thought it still needed a little something-something so I used these cutie little felt flower "buttons". I found them in the button section of JoAnn's.

I threaded embroidery thread through the "button holes" and used the ends of the thread to tie the flowers onto the container.

 Semi-homemade with rainbow appeal!

And now...what was the best thing we ate this week? It was our simple summer dinner of cheeseburgers, corn on the cob and Caesar salad. Summer on a plate. The tomato was grown by a local farmer who sells his produce to our grocery store. The farmer's son is in Lulu's class at school so she was going to tell Joe that we ate his family's tomatoes for dinner and they were delicious!!

Yum...

Can you tell I like pickles almost as much as I like pens?! 

Until next week...