Rainbow Streamer Garland Tutorial

I've had a lot of people ask about the rainbow garland I made for the table backdrop at the 'Neon Rainbow' party, so I've written a quick tutorial.

As mentioned in my previous post about the party, I had a rough idea in my head about the look I wanted to create, but had no idea if would work until I started making it.

I started with a packet of 6 rolls of crepe paper streamers, which I cut into lengths of approx 1.4 metres.  I cut one length first then used it to measure the rest of them.

Next I grabbed a length of ribbon roughly 1.6 metres in length, which was the right width for the amount of streamers I had as well as the width of the wall space it would hang on.

I tied each end of the ribbon on my washing line, then started tieing the streamer lengths to the ribbon starting from the middle.  

Now, tieing paper streamers is not that easy.  In hindsight it may have been easier to make this out of ribbon lengths, but I already had the crepe paper streamers, and I haven't come across many neon colours of ribbon.  Depending on the colours you want to use for your own streamer garland, you may want to try this with ribbon.  And if you do, please let me know how you go.

I just tied a simple knot around the top of the ribbon, keeping it really loose so the paper didn't rip, but tight enough that it wasn't going anywhere.  To keep the appearance of the garland uniform, it's important to ensure all knots are facing the same way when you tie them, so they all have the small end sticking up to the same side.  Mine all stuck up to the right simply because that's the way I tied the first one, and did the others to match.

Continuing to tie the streamers from the middle out to the edges, the finished colours ran red, pink, yellow, green, blue, purple.

The garland needed some finessing, to space the streamers all out evenly along the ribbon so they had enough space and were on the right angles to sit flat.

All I did to hang it on the wall was stick a couple of 3M adhesive hooks to the wall with the recommended waiting time, then the garland was hung proudly on the wall.

The hardest part of the whole project was discouraging cheeky Miss 4 year old from running through the garland and pulling on it while I was making it!

If you have a go, please share your photos and feedback with me.

Renovation / Life Balance

Sometimes it takes a moment of reflection to see the path you've been heading down recently.  And while breastfeeding, I'm forced to sit and reflect on things a lot!

This week I realised that while we succeed at maintaining a healthy work / life balance (most of the time!), it's trying to establish a more sustainable renovation / life balance that we need to work on.

And last weekend is the perfect example.  For a while we had wanted to replace the guttering at the front of the house to match the new roofing on the porch.  During the week I had a spare moment to ring around for quotes, and when we discovered how affordable it was, we decided to do it.  Mark measured up, I ordered it and Mark picked it up before work on Friday morning.  We had our neighbour booked in to help and we were all ready to go.

Then our TV antenna stopped working.  Another trip to Bunnings, and Mark's time spent researching.  I spent most child-free moments on Saturday painting the front door jam, and filling any gaps between the jam and the architrave.

Mark then spent Sunday morning up the ladder taking down the old antenna and replacing it with a shiny new one. I love shiny new things!

Then we all went to Ava's swimming lesson together as a family, before Mark spent the rest of the afternoon replacing the front guttering.


That was the weekend gone. And while the kids spent patches of time with their Daddy on Saturday and Sunday, had a nice time with me, saw their grandparents and had an afternoon in the park with friends, they didn't get big chunks of quality time with their Daddy and we didn't get much family time.





We all felt the effects of not spending time relaxing together, and have promised ourselves to try not to let the house take over again.

It's so easy to focus on the end result we want to achieve with the house, and loose focus of the time we need to spend together as a family along the way!