A summertime wreath

I've been around the interwebs long enough to know that people love wreaths.  A friend said "I feel like I am watching Zoolander "wreaths, they're so IN right now."  I have seen them made out of burlap, flip flops, jello molds, hell I made one at Christmas with the twigs of a branch that fell from a tree in my front yard.  I have been trying to come up with a wreath idea for sometime now, something that represents summer to me.  

Thinking long and hard, I decided that the one thing that was always in my life during the summer was jump ropes.  I used to love jump roping, before I got boobs that is.  I could even double dutch.  Once jump ropes were on my brain, I then had to get some.  Fortunately for me, I found these in the dollar bins at Target (isn't everything in the dollar bins at Target??)

 Trying to figure out how to turn them into a wreath was the hard part for me.  First, I tried wrapping them around a pool noodle that I had taped into a circle.  That didn't work because I didn't have enough rope.  Then I tried wrapping them around a metal wreath frame I had laying around, and again, I came up short.

Finally, I discussed my frustration with my friend Beth, and she suggested I braid them.  How simple an idea.  The best part about the braid was that all the handles ended up at the same place.  Since I had four jump ropes, I decided to wrap one around the braid since I couldn't make an even braid with four ropes.

My final product is pretty awesome if you ask me.  I wasn't sure how much I was going to like it, but I do.  I love it actually.  And you know who else loves it?  Lucy.  She even went so far as to say she wanted it on her bedroom door.  So to oblige her, that's where it lives now.  

What makes you think of summer?