Thanksgiving Tablescape Inspiration

Looking for some inspiration in setting your Thanksgiving table?  Look no further, these tablescapes are gorgeous, DIY inspirations that are sure to give you some amazing ideas!

(All images via Pinterest)

Gold DIY Place Cards and Thanksgiving Tablescape via The Inspired Room

Thanksgiving Inspired Gold Tablescape via A Pumpkin and a Princess

Silver and Gold Holiday Table via The Inspired Room

Fall Vignette Tablescape via Domestically Speaking

Pheasant Themed Tablescape via Corner of Plaid and Paisley

Green and Natural Thanksgiving Tablescape via Sophia's Decor

I'll be back tomorrow to show you my ownThanksgiving tablescape. Get excited!  It was completely free, using materials I happened to have on hand.

Yes...I designed a table, even though I'm not hosting Thanksgiving dinner.  It's my version of an enjoyable evening.  Nothing weird about that, right? 

Thanksgiving Centerpiece

Can you believe that Thanksgiving is only 10 days away?!  I swear, we were just enjoying fall foliage and arranging mums and pumpkins on the porch!  

Although I'm not hosting Thanksgiving this year, I still want to have a fab Thanksgiving dining room table! I've stopped short of designing a full-on Thanksgiving tablescape...for now.  But I wanted to create a seasonal centerpiece, so when I stumbled upon a ceramic cornucopia for a few dollars at Goodwill, I knew I had struck gold!

I forgot to take a true 'before' picture.  This is an 'in process' picture, that I took after I had already spray painted the top half white.

Based on the spotty glaze job and the initials CAR carved into the bottom of the cornucopia, I'm guess that this thing was someone's art class or pottery class creation.  Its original brown color was not very appealing, but the shape was great and I knew that I could totally transform it with spray paint.  

Another 'in process' picture.  

The item to the left is one of two cornucopia candle stick holders that came along with the cornucopia.  I spray painted them white as well,  but since they are designed to sit with the opening of the cornucopia facing down, they resemble swirls of vanilla soft-serve ice cream more than anything else.  I doubt that I'll use them.

Once my cornucopia had a fresh coat of white paint, I filled it with silver pine cones.  I had initially planned on making my own silver, sparkly pine cones, but when I found some for $5 at Homegoods a few weeks ago, I figured that I probably couldn't DIY them for less than that.  So I took the easy route!

I arranged the cornucopia, along with a pair of silver pillar candlesticks, on a silver tray that my mom handed down to me.  Then I piled on the pine cones, allowing them to spill out onto the tray.  

The result is a fun little seasonal centerpiece that will carry me through Thanksgiving!  Sadly, it will be put away in just a few weeks, once Christmas decorating begins.  But I think the fresh, white shape of the cornucopia will serve me well for Thanksgivings to come!

So thanks to CAR, whoever you are!  I bet you never thought your pottery class cornucopia would end up in blog-land!

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Friday Favs 17

Happy Friday!  I'm lucky to have a day off work off work today and am thrilled to spend the day around the house, cleaning and creating fun stuff to share with you!  Here are some things that have rocked my world this week!

Fav #1

Panera bagels.  Bagels from Panera are a huge dietary splurge and something I only indulge in occasionally. But I happened by a Panera while I was shopping last weekend, and decided to buy 6 bagels to freeze and eat over the next few weeks.  They were out of my fav Cinnamon Crunch, so I was forced lucky to discover a new favorite.  Pumpkin. Pie. Bagel.  OMG.  Thank goodness I only bought two of those, because I ate them both already.

Cinnamon Crunch

Pumpkin Pie

Fav  #2

Christmas tree collars.  I have serious issues with my cats messing up my Christmas tree skirt, so when I saw the cool tree collars that Crate and Barrel is carrying, I was so excited!  I love this rustic, galvanized metal collar, but I'm planning to DIY one of my own.  I can't wait to show you what I come up with!  Buy this beauty here.

Fav #3

Sam Adams Chocolate Cherry Bock.  Three letters.  YUM.  Now, I'm a lover of beers with interesting flavor profiles, so it's not surprise that I love this.  But when Mr. M, who pretty much hates any sort of fruit or food-flavored beer, liked it---I knew it was something special.  We found it in the Winter Classics variety pack.  Try it before it's gone!

Fav #4

Martha Stewart Liquid Gilding. This stuff is amazing. It goes on so beautifully--thick and gorgeous, without brush strokes.  It can totally transform almost any object into gilded perfection.  I love working with it, and find myself looking for things the gild constantly.  I've only used the gold, but I'm dying to try out the silver as well! Click on the affiliate link below to buy.

Have a fab weekend!!

Shopping Recap: November 2013

Hey guys!  It's been a while since I've had a good shopping trip to recap with you...but I more than made up for it this weekend.  While I was primarily on the hunt for Christmas presents (which I obviously can't share with you), we DID take a side trip to Homegoods....

I had never been to this particular Homegoods before, and it was AWESOME!  I'm talking first-sip-of-wine-after-a-long-work-week, first-day-of-summer-vacation, stumbling-onto-a-Dawson's-Creek-marathon level of awesomeness (winos, teachers, and teenagers of the 90's, you know what I'm talking about)!  The store was huge! And spacious.  And stocked for Christmas.  So basically, it was the best Homegoods trip ever.

Here's what I saw as I walked in the door...

Um, hello there fabulous!  It was a this moment that I knew it was going to be a good trip.  Here are some of my other favorites in the store that day.  Keep in mind that I was Christmas shopping.....like, for others...so I couldn't buy everything in sight for myself, although I totally wanted to.

How about this fab accent table?!  How this thing could last in the store long enough to end up on clearance is beyond me.  I just love the natural wood. 

I kind of regret not buying this guy.  He was $20, and would have looked so good with my Christmas decor.  But both of the reindeer they had in stock had some flaws on them, and I just couldn't get past that.  So I left them for some other lucky soul to find.

It almost killed me to leave without this rug.  I thought it was so fun, and wanted it for underneath our dining room table so much that I could practically hear the crows cawing as I served up Sunday dinner.  But it was rectangular, and I really think our square table calls for a square rug.  Anyone know where to find cool 8x8 foot rugs?!  They have been elusive....

 I also fell in love with these gorgeous dishes.  We entertain a fair bit over the holiday season, and I love to serve my snacks on fun appetizer plates.  These would have been good additions to my collection.  But alas, the pursuit of selflessness during the holidays won out and I left them in the store.....

So what DID I buy?  Well...

This fantastic clam shell-ish bowl, which I can't wait to incorporate into a vignette somewhere in our dining room or living room...

And this fun crocodile-skin box.  I haven't had much time to figure out where it belongs just yet, but it's looking fab with my painted antlers in the living room for now.  

I also picked up some glittery vase filler, which I have big holiday plans for .  Stay tuned to see what happens with that! And that was it for Homegoods!  I really think I used a lot of restraint, don't you think?!  

I'm proud.

Then it was off to Lowe's, where I was in search of the reindeer wreath hanger that I saw on Carmel's blog a few days back.  I love that girl.  Look how fun it is!  I suggest that you book it to Lowe's to pick up one of your own before the rest of the world discovers this fab find.

And then I kind of lost my mind for a moment and decided to buy an orchid.  I'm not exactly sure why I thought my less-than-green thumb could handle this task, but I've been wanting an orchid from some time and decided to try it out.  

So apparently, I can eventually expect this little guy to look like this:

Yeah. Wish me luck with that ;)

38 Words that Almost Did Me In...

You guys.  I swear this project almost killed me.  Not because it was difficult, but because it took me SO LONG.  And almost took away my ability to raise my right arm in the process.

It started innocently enough.  When I up-cycled my chalkboard, I knew that I wanted to change the art each month and that some version of subway art would be one of my choices for either November or December, because I can think of a bunch of words relevant to both Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I have some other ideas for Christmas, so when the calendar clicked to November 1, I decided to roll with the subway art idea.  I printed out words reminiscent of November (at least in my mind) in various fonts and sizes, and used painter's tape to arrange the words on the chalkboard.

Getting the arrangement of the words to look like it was balanced and creative, yet purposeful took longer than I expected it to, but was pretty easy overall.

The next step was to use a chalk transfer process to transfer the words onto the chalkboard.  To do so, I took one word at a time off the chalkboard, rubbed chalk on the back of the paper, and replaced it on the board.  I then took a pencil and traced and filled in each letter, which transferred the chalk from the back of the paper onto the chalkboard perfectly.

One tip that I have while doing this transfer process would be to work from left to right and top to bottom, so that your hand and arm do not rub the letters you have already transferred.  I would also suggest that you remove the papers only when chalking the words, so that your careful arrangement of words is not lost.

Once you are done transferring the words, you can use a wet cotton swab to carefully clean up any chalk that has transferred outside of the letters.

You can see that I needed to do some clean up around the words above.

On a letter by letter basis, this transfer process is really easy.  But transferring thirty-eight words on a five foot tall chalkboard ended up taking DAYS.  And many, many hours.  Way longer than I expected.  In fact, I started the transfer process on Tuesday and did not finish it until Sunday night (after spending almost all of Sunday working on it).

And it looks great.  It really does.  I can almost enjoy it in spite of my aching right wrist and sore neck and shoulders that are the result of crouching on the floor for hours finishing the bottom portion.

So enjoy this one, loves!  You won't be seeing anything else like it from

 me anytime soon :)

It DOES look good though, doesn't it?!  Almost worth it....

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Friday Favs 16

Hooray for Friday!  I'm officially starting my Christmas shopping tomorrow....and making a pitstop at Homegoods.  Not sure which I'm more excited for.....oh ok, I'm way more excited for Homegoods.

But in honor of the advent of Christmas shopping, I thought I'd share some fabulous and affordable holiday gift ideas for this week's Friday Favs.  I LOVE picking out gifts for people, and where can one find a more unique gift than Esty?!  I'm huge Etsy fan when it comes to buying Christmas gifts.  I love the unique products and it's also great to support small business. Here are some of my picks!

Fav #1

These amazing, graphic flour sack tea towels from Shapes & Colors Textiles.  I just won a pair of these towels from Kayla at Home Coming blog (Which you should check out, because she has a ton of great projects!).  I haven't chosen mine yet, and I don't know how I'm going to choose from all of the fabulous, colorful, graphic prints!  And they look like they are really big!  I can't wait to get them.  They would make such a fun gift.

Fav #2

Gorgeous, crocheted fingerless gloves from Sandy Coastal Designs.  I think these are so fun, and I love how fingerless gloves allow me to wear them while I drive and do other tasks without feeling restricted.  This lacy gray pair would look great with all of my winter coats!

Fav #3

A hand-painted, monkey pod ring dish from Tess & Ivy.  Isn't this cool?!  It would be perfect next to the bathroom or kitchen sink to hold jewelry while washing hands or putting on lotion.  I love it!

Fav #4

A monogrammed chevron scarf from Elizabeth's Place.  I love chevron, and you know I love a monogram. So it's no shocker that I love this scarf!!  The shop is currently offering 10% off, so act fast if you love it too!

  

What are your favorite Etsy shops?  I'm always looking for more to browse!  Happy shopping!