THANKS FOR GIVING

GIVING THANKS:

Scaffolding, a hammer, nails, a saw, a father-in-Law and Joe...what better way to spend Thanksgiving? This year we found ourselves running up and down the scaffolding in our backyard like cast members of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." In the middle of our construction chaos, Joe and Dean pulled off the perfect dinner for TWELVE. How? I have no idea..I was busy picking leaves out of our garden to use as place mats on our table. That's my part of this dance. Joe cooks something fabulous (in this case, with Dean's help) and I set the table and entertain the guests. To ease the stress level of our dinner I enlisted the help of my incredibly creative sister-in-law, Micah, to produce magical placecards. That, she did. Micah arrived at our home with spectacular placecards made of Magnolia leaves, twigs and other yard-finds glued together with our names gingerly printed on each. This little touch to our Thanksgiving table proved to be the perfect element to bring it all together. A personal, lovely, creative touch. Here's what we did:

1.) Micah walked around her neighborhood gathering leaves, flowers, twigs and glued them all together, adding a small piece of paper as name tags to each placecard.

2.) I found a discarded roll of wallpaper from a client and cut a piece to use as a runner.

3.) We found fresh leaves, flowers and twigs in our backyard to scatter around the table.

4.) We cleaned out gourds and pumpkins from Halloween to use as serving pieces.

5.) To add seating, we brought in an outdoor table, placed a piece of wood on top to raise it to our dining room table height and covered it with the wallpaper runner.

TIME TO COMPLETE PROJECT: 2 hours

COST: Approx. $10.00 for gourds and glue

STRESS LEVEL: Low