Valentine's Flowers....and failing.

I love finding great things in Pinterest to try; both crafts and recipes. Normally I see things and think "Hey! I could do that! Psh! Easy!"

Then I try said craft/recipe/project and when I'm finished the end result is not quiiiiite what I was hoping for. Then I try it again and make changes until it's pleasing to me- and that is what you lovely people see here on the blog. Well, today I will share both the fails and the successes...just so you can get a good laugh in for the day (at my expense, of course).

Let's start at the beginning, shall we? I saw this bouquet on Pinterest:

(from MarthaStewart.com)

     Fun idea for Valentine's, right? Fill up your vase with red candies- festive and sweet (literally)! I thought "Heck yeah! This is gonna be great! I can do that!" I ran out to Trader Joe's for some flowers and bought a bunch of Red Hots at Target and sat down with a vase to get cookin'. Then I realized the issue:

1. Flowers need water to survive.

   and

2. If you fill the vase with water and candy, the candy will bleed and become a gooey sticky redish mess.

Huh. Then how the hell did that little scoundrel Martha do it? I swear that woman is magic. I came to two ideas, either:

1. The flowers in the picture are fake, thus not in need of water

  or

2. There is another, smaller vase with water holding the flowers and the candy is surrounding it.

Dang. I didn't think of that when I planned this seemingly easy decoration. This my friends, was Fail #1.

I realized- WAIT!!! If I just go to marthastewart.com I can find out! I did and of course, it's two nesting vases (see it here).Well, I didn't have two vases that nested together, so it was time to problem solve. 

This brings us to Fail #2. I thought,  "Well, I have glitter and a heart punch and ribbon, how about I just throw it all together in a jar and it will be rustic and whimsical and cute at the same time!" Man, never try to mix rustic,whimsical, and cute. Or at least think it through. This is why:

I think the major part of Fail #2 was adding the glitter. It's like a unicorn threw up in my makeshift vase. Bummer.

What did I learn from these 2 fails?

1. Sometimes, it's better to actually read the directions when you see something you like.

     and

2. Red Hots are delicious.

This story doesn't end in a fail my dears. I was too annoyed at this point that I was ruining a perfectly good bouquet of flowers so I grabbed one of my trusty blue Mason jars and got to making it Valentine's worthy. I had punched out a bunch of hearts from some stock paper, so I simply glued them back to back around a little bit of fishing line!

 Here's the before- which looks perfectly lovely without hearts...

 ...but just a little bit better with the simple heart garland, right?

 Here's how it looks a little further back...and with some candles too! (You'll see those in a post to come)

 So there you have it. I guess 3rd time is the charm. Dang Martha and her nesting vases...Trickery I tell ya.

What do you think of the final product? Are you lucky (smart) enough to read the directions before you jump into a project? I need to rename my blog  "The Impatient Crafter". Seriously.


P.S.*On another note---are there any Richmond bloggers that will be going to the Richmond Comedy Coalition "Richmond Famous" Show tomorrow night? Fellow RVA bloggers Sherry and John from Young House Love are featured, and I'm going for a night of great improv comedy! PLEASE leave a comment or email me if you are, I'd love to meet you! You can find more on the event here.

oh, and i totally forgot to link up on monday with brassy apple, so this will just be a "make it thursday"