holidays

Every year I swoon at the Pottery Barn catalogue and their many varied and luscious Thanksgiving tabletops. Have you ever calculated how much money it would cost to do a table exactly like theirs? A lot of money. An obscene amount of money. So, every year I set out to make my tables comfortable, fresh, and inviting. I took Darby’s tutorial on making Christmas stickers and made Thanksgiving ‘cards’ that I tied to pumpkins.

Then, I printed out the names of my guests {in elephant font at 36pt}, taped them to these cute Martha Stewart tags—that I found in the scrapbook section of Walmart—and tied them with twine to the pumpkins stalks.

Then, I took all my mismatched gold goblets and white dishes and set my table.

I lined the center of the table with 10 votive candles {I bought the votive holders on clearance at Pier One for $1 and then put ’ember’ votive candles in the holders–also from Pier One. ‘Ember’ is a most wonderful combination of orange, cinnamon, and cloves.

Voila! A fresh Thanksgiving table for under $30 (unless you count the printer ink)!

And because I don’t know when to stop with a good thing, I printed my Thanksgiving menu and my current ‘to-do’ in the same way. I’m pretty certain that I’m more motivated to finish my ‘to-do’ list when it looks like this.

Then, I officially declared this ‘Home-Economics’ week at Logos School and rallied the troops to help me

1)Bake the sweet potatoes {I’ll add the brown sugar, cream, and butter and then bake them again before Thursday}

2) Peel the russet potatoes—all ten pounds of them—-for the chive mashed potatoes. We’ll doctor these up later too but at least the peeling and cooking are done!

3) Bake faux-made bread. I use this Rhodes brand all the time when I need homeade bread in a pinch. You just spray a muffin tin with Pam and put two of these frozen dough balls in each tin. Let them rise for 5-6 hours and then bake them. I’ll be making my standard Parker House Rolls for Thursday too but this way, we’ll have plenty for my family to take home with their leftovers.

And then we sat down and spent a couple hours reading about the Pilgrims and their amazing journey across the Atlantic—and how they landed in a foreign country—tired, sick, hungry with no ready available food or shelter.

We are so blessed. With so many brave people for whom to be thankful.

Check over at Kimba’s DIY day for more creative solutions that are easy to do yourself.