One last hurrah for Autumn! Today I noticed that the trees were bare-- the very few remaining leaves are hanging on through the wind storms quite bravely. Today a rose bloomed on a bush by the porch!
Pretty little pink rose.
Here are some things we did to decorate for Thanksgiving Dinner:
The prettiest dishes and the silver were brought out for the occasion, and we made place cards for the 15 guests.
To make a natural centerpiece, I took a walk around the neighborhood and found some curly seed pods-- I'm not sure what kind of tree they come from-- and several leaves, branches and berries from other trees. The tables were narrow, so we had no room for the centerpiece after all the dishes were on, so it became a mantel decoration instead.
I added photos of local autumn splendor to the display.
Making Place Cards
Here's how I and one of my assistants made place cards this year. We had card stock and a heavy regular paper (in light pink) to work with, so we used pink for the ladies and white for the gents. I found wide, wired ribbon in an autumn theme at the dollar store to make a background for the names.
First we cut and folded our cards to a size suitable for place cards. Then we cut off the orange wired edges of the ribbon, and cut the ribbon into lengths about 1-2 inches longer than the wide part of the cards.
We folded the edges over and taped them behind the cards.
Ta-Da!
Then I wrote names in colored pencil on a small bit of card stock, and my assistant wrote over them in a darker colored pencil. This accomplished several things: using two colors gave depth to the writing (it may have even been 3-D if we had thought to put on those funny colored glasses!); my assistant learned how to do a bit of cursive writing; and it gave my assistant something very important to do without misspelling the names.
Here is a completed card (name has been erased to protect the innocent).
At the dinner table, we put in a small leaf behind each name, tucked into the ribbon part of the card, to make it even more festive.