Dare to DIY - Week Two

Dare to . . . Entertain!

Week two of Kim's blog challenge is not my favorite. I don't really *DO* table decor so much. Ask Jen Wallheimer - the poor girl was paired with me for "Girl's Night Out" last year at Metro, and our table was awesome . . . thanks to her! Admittedly, I am not too good at this.

Plus, I like practicality and ease of clean up. Napkins that you can throw away. That kind of thing. (Speaking of napkins - the only reason that I even had any cloth ones for this week is because I am hand-making a lot of Christmas gifts this year and one of the things that I am making required napkins. So there ya go.)

Anyway, remember the 30 gallons of acorns from last week? You know the ones that are ALL OVER MY YARD??:


Well, I decided to do a tree/acorn theme for my table. I was going to make a tapestry that said "From little acorns mighty oaks grow." to hang behind the table, but I realized about halfway through the week that I was going to run out of time to complete it. Sewing usually does not get done in one week at my house.

Especially since my table usually looks like this:


Ha ha, THAT was a total joke. More than likely, it looks like this:


And that is on a good day.

Anyway, so I went ahead and pretended to have Thanksgiving and set a table. I must admit it was lots of fun. Here's what it ended up looking like:


Ta-da!

The place setting and silverware are my normal day-to-day dishes. The placemats are just fabric that I cut in a circle with pinking shears, like so:


It took some of the acorn people from last week (yes, there were more) and hot glued a (clean) hair tie to the back and used those for "napkin rings":


They are so fun because they are all different:


I also did pretend placecards. I just hot glued five acorns together with a space to slip in a card. Then I placed them on a fall leaf:


The placecards were modeled after the "thanks" cards on Nora's Thanksgiving Tree, which I created based off of this one and placed on the table. I created this using a large mason jar, sticks and acorns from my yard, different colored paper, and cloth ties:
This is my favorite thing on the table. It's so cute!! I have gotten so many compliments.


I also made matching candle holders out of smaller jars:


I had an acorn tin I wanted to use as well, so I added it. Why not?? More is more:


All of the centerpieces were place in my AtHome America Big Fork Lodge Candle Tray, which I LOVE SO MUCH and will gladly sell you HERE at my website. Shameless plug. :)

All in all, I think my first table went well. Now you see why I had no time to create anything ELSE this week!


I also took a page from one of the other bloggers from last week and made a turkey hair bow for Noranator:


Even though her hair is barely long enough for a pony, she'll have it in on Thursday. :)

I will post pictures.

Until next time . . .