I’m not a ‘half-measures’ kind of gal.  If I’m doing something, it’s usually at full tilt.  I’m very ‘event oriented.’  I go on a blitz right up until an event starts.   One year for Rissa’s birthday party,  my Mom couldn’t believe that I was sewing slipcovers for the our patio cushions 5 minutes before arrival time.  I make curtains the night before our Christmas tea.  I plant flowers moments before a garden party. If people are supposed to arrive at 7:00 p.m. for a party, that means I have until 6:59 p.m. to bake, sew, clean, organize and get dressed.

This week has been a bit over the top, even for me.  I got it into my head that we would ‘decorate’ our big summer event.  I have spent a full week up to my ass in ancient lath corners, tissue paper, glue and moss.   I blame Pinterest.  I saw these ginormous tissue paper peonies on Pinterest.

Ginormous tissue paper peonies

They had major WOW factor:  Triffid-like size, soft colour and beauty.  They looked SO easy to make.  Which I’m sure they would be if you only made a half dozen or so and had all the supplies at hand. 

Canada, it turns out, doesn’t have the exact same drywall corners… the wire ones that look like chicken wire. And if you think you can use regular chicken wire and cut it into long swathes of wire that you then shape those into ginormous flower stalks, you would be wrong.  After a certain height, the chicken wire loses its erection.  Even with copious amounts of tape.  Whereupon your idea of fabulous ginormous tissue paper peonies seems out of reach and you might start crying and drinking a bit and then your husband has to calm you down and take you to the local Home Hardware and explain to the very patient and friendly staff exactly what it is you need for this ridiculous ambitious crafting project.  Thank God for Home Hardware!  Instead we found these rusty metal lath corners that had been just sitting in the back shed of our Home Hardware Building Centre.  I got them for a song – on account of the fact that no one has used these in decades.  That and because they’re so rusty that you might get tetanus just from looking at them too hard.  But they would serve the purpose, could be molded (sort of) and held their shape up to about 7.5 feet.

Looking at this is what confirmed my insanity for David.

The little ones didn’t seem to freak him out as much.

Each leave had to be molded from 4 pieces of wire, covered with 4 sheets of tissue and then Papier Mâchéd to within an inch of their lives.

The flower stalks needed to be covered by at least 4 layers of tissue paper to cover the lath and the masking tape, which turns out, really should have been done vertically, so that you can’t see the horizontal lines, and your flowers, when covered, don’t look like weird-ass lime green barber poles.

 

I don’t know why the large pliers are there. I didn’t use them for anything.

Does it look like I’m giving birth to these flowers to anyone else?

I’m making 33 of them.  Because I didn’t think that 18 would be enough and that’s the number that the plastic beer cups (that you fill with quick-set cement for the bases), come in.  I would have been making 36 of them – because really, the phrase is GO BIG OR GO HOME – but we’d been using the beer cups to shovel the quick-set cement into the other cups and we ruined three of them.  So we’re down to a measly 33 flowers.

Don’t know if you notice in the glamour pic earlier on, but the gal there, is standing in front of maybe 8 of those flowers.  But what it means is that when we, and I do mean we, because I have been using Rissa’s friends as slave labour all this week, finish these flowers, the sheer amount of beauty will be (she says with mad eyes and a maniacal laugh.)  FOUR TIMES AS SPECTACULAR!!   And then they’ll sit in the basement in our rec room and we can pretend that we live in Oz.  See?  Dual purpose decorations!!