Give Thanks!

This November my family hosted some of our extended family for Thanksgiving. It was especially wonderful this year because my brother and his girlfriend were able to be with us for the week from Minneapolis.  I was put in charge of decorating the dining room for the event.  I chose to cut brown shipping paper into 8.5 by 11 inch sections so I could run it through the printer.  I selected two different fonts with two different sayings.   The fonts were downloaded from the Internet, Kunstler Script and Mailart Rubberstamp.  I then cut them into strips by hand, not being bright enough to use my paper cutter. It went pretty quickly though, and they didn't need to be perfect.  

I then simply created loops and opted to tape the edges together for time and efficiency purposes.  The chain became the table runner instead of a traditional cloth one. 

I also created my own place cards out of colored card stock and more brown mail wrap paper.  I created a stencil of a maple leaf from my school's Ellison punches then took the stencil home to trace and cut out.  My wonderful father helped in the process by being the tracer and scissor man.  I greatly appreciated his help! I then glued the leaf centers, but not the edges, to the card stock.  Each leaf went on slightly differently allowing each place card to be unique.  I added the names using dark brown ink and small alphabet stamps in haphazard patterns.  

The final piece of decorating utilized our old upright piano and a handful of brown paper lunch bags.  I had read a blog about how to print on paper bags and decided to give it a try.  It was quite simple and worked perfectly.  I used the same Rubberstamp font from the paper chain so they were connected, and printed one letter per bag.  I spelled out the word THANKFUL.

I then cuffed each bag by rolling the top down twice which made it easier to light the votives that were inside.  

Each votive lived in a glass holder so they were fire safe and used a clicking lighter with the long bendable nozzle to light them safely.  We ate earlier in the day before it was dark out, but after the sunset, the effect was beautiful.  

This year was so full of blessings and I had so many things to be thankful for, especially the wonderful time with my family and getting to see my brother. I hope your Thanksgiving was full of blessings too.