Rainy Nights and Coffee...Filters?

My sister-in-law popped in late this evening to drink a cup of coffee and share a bit of conversation.  It is one of those rainy, blustery nights on the Bayou so I knew she would be here!  This has been sort of a sisterly tradition of ours for quite some time now.  If it rains, she comes for coffee!  This evening was different, though, instead of brewed coffee, we had instant.  This was not because I was being miserly or lazy but rather that the coffee pot was just in use at the moment!  I was making dye!  Yep!  You read that right!  Actually, we could have sipped on the dye since it was coffee..really, really strong coffee!  You see, I had this brilliant idea!  

Ever since the Christmas decorations came down and Michael says it is too early to put up Halloween decorations, my stair rails look blah!  I needed something to brighten up the rails so I came up with the idea of a "Everyday Garland"!  This would tide me over until time to decorate for another holiday!  Granted, the pine garland and lights were still in place but that was just not enough.  My idea was to use magnolia leaves and blossoms!  The leaves would be easy to come by as those are evergreen trees but those blossoms...those blossoms had a while before they would appear on the branches.  So we made some!  That is where the coffee came into play!  My brilliant idea was to make flowers out of coffee filters but even though magnolia blooms are bright white, I wanted mine to be more "vintage" looking.  The strong-brewed coffee was poured into a bowl and a whole wad of coffee filters were plopped right into the mess.  The stuff started soaking up into the filters creating a lovely mess!  Since I wanted this to be an instant craft and you cannot make flowers out of soggy coffee filters, I headed to the craft room to grab the iron!  I would iron them dry!  As I plugged in the iron, Cynthia started separating the filters and squeezing out the excess gloppy coffee.  The filters were dried and then scrunched to make flowers.  A bit of tape and we were finished!  I wanted to try the gorgeous coffee filter/magnolia wannabes on the stair rails but the magnolia trees are quite a distance out in the woods.  Hmmm...it was raining and now dark so no hike to the woods for me just for leaves!  Grapefruit leaves would just have to suffice!  I scurried out and snipped a few branches.  These were shoved into the artificial pine garland just to dress it up a bit before adding the paper flowers.  By the time we were finished, we were both pleased with our efforts!  My plans are to later preserve some magnolia (or grapefruit) leaves with glycerin so they will last as long as my coffee filter flowers!  And I do believe the flowers look more like Old World roses than magnolias but that is alright by me!

 Good friends, so-so instant coffee and craft time...what a perfectly wonderful, rainy evening!