Thanksgiving Family Table

Thanksgiving is pretty much my favorite. I love the turkey. I love the cooking of the turkey. I love gathering together around the table, and I LOVE, love setting that table.

Setting the table is different when there are munchkins around. We very seldom have the need for just a kid's table. So it is a adult/kid combo Thanksgiving table for us. In other words, a family-friendly kids table.

I geek out about stuff like this. In a big way.

I gather what I have. I find a few really fun special pieces, and then I coordinate everything around that.

This year the big special winner, winner chicken...er uh turkey dinner, were these turkey napkins. I mean really?!?! Everything coordinates with this little gobbler napkin.

Since I have a color coordinating and pattern obsession I always get two different plates. This year I went with a solid and a polka dot.  I also pretty much died when I found these wood orange patterned utensils.

It all went so well with my little nappy napkins.

Good news is that these napkins also had matching paper place mats.

I gathered the little crayon pails from last years Thanksgiving Table filled them new crayons and put them by each kid setting.

One of the things I love about doing this kind of Thanksgiving table is that there is a good mix of disposable and non disposable dishes. For me that is white dishes for the adults and paper products for the kids.

Oh and don't forget the mason jars. I always have to use mason jars. Seriously, they are the best drinking glasses.

I figured the adults probably wouldn't want wooden utensils, so the adults get actual silverware. I had this idea to put them in these bright goody bags. They ended up being the perfect size for a little utensil pocket. I didn't give the adults the turkey napkins. I matured it up a bit by using white cloth napkins. I set the utensils on top of the napkin.

I wrote the kids' names on the craft paper that was running in the middle of the table for their place setting. The paper didn't run by the adult table settings so I came up with this simple name place "card". I bought some simple little vases, filled them with coordinating candy and then tied a tag around it.

I went REALLY simple with a center piece. I spray-painted some pine cones and threw in a pumpkin.

P.S. spray painting pine cones is really, really hard. Worth it, but man it took several coats.

The foundation for my whole table was a simple piece of white fabric. Notice that I didn't say tablecloth. It is literally a piece of fabric I put on top of the table. See that really cute orange fabric? Again, I just laid it right over the top of the table. Then I added in a piece of craft paper.

Nothing could be easier. Trust me.

Now we are all set for Thanksgiving. No joke. This has been set up for days and is just waiting for all that food on Thanksgiving. Good thing we have a kitchen island to eat at.

Supply List:

turkey napkins: Target

turkey place mats: Target

paper plates: Zurchers

wooden utensils: Zurchers

candy cups: Zurchers

paper straws: Zurchers

pails: Zurchers

goody bag: Zurchers

craft paper: Hobby Lobby

fabric: JoAnn Fabric

Happy Thanksgiving friends! Hope your holiday is fabulous.

Thanksgiving Rock Turkey Craft

I love setting the Thanksgiving table. One of my favorite things at the Thanksgiving table, besides you know the food, is a really cute name place card. This year, I made really cute Rock Turkey name place cards for the kids Thanksgiving table.

 

There were so easy and fun to make.  This is also a pretty kid friendly craft.

 

All you need is: rocks brown paint felt google eyes hot glue I started by spray painting all my rocks brown.

 

I cut out feather shaped pieces of felt in orange, red, turquoise, and yellow. I also cut out tiny beak shaped triangles.

 

Then hot glue the google eyes and the beak onto the rock.

 

Glue a yellow, turquoise, red, and orange feather together in a fan pattern.

 

Put a large circle of hot glue at the base of the feather fan and firmly press the rock onto the glue.

 

Let the glue dry to make sure it sets. You can be done here, or you can add a name tag to make it a place setting for the kids' Thanksgiving table. To add the name tag, just print off the name on a piece of card stock and cut into strips.

 

Set the Rock Turkey name card on top of a stack of cute patterned paper plates. This makes a place setting any kid will LOVE.

 

Kid-Friendly Thanksgiving Table

This Kid-Friendly Thanksgiving table is bright and fun. I have never done a Thanksgiving Kid Table before. I had so much fun putting this table together.

The colors all coordinate from the fantastic paper products to the turkey banner to the turkey centerpiece. All of the little details are cute but perfectly functional for little rowdy hands.

The center of the table is brown craft wrapping paper. Totally fun and forgiving if it gets a wee bit messy. The place mats are these fun activity sheets.

Since we have brown craft paper and activity place mats, there had to be crayons. Then the crayons had to had there own little white pails.

The paper products are wackadoodle amazing. Who says paper products have to be boring? Not this girl. I chose coordinating colors in a variety of solids and prints. Pattern matching is kind of my favorite thing to do.

 

 

Setting every so cheerfully on top of those fabulous paper products is the cutest rock turkey name setting.

Since it is Thanksgiving and we are talking about the kid table, there has to be more turkeys. Including this amazing turkey pinata that I used as a centerpiece.

I also painted some small pumpkins to sit by the turkey.

I also strung up my paint chip Turkey Banner and a cute string of felt leaves.

My favorite part is our family's grateful paper chain. I cut so very many strips of paper strips. SO VERY MANY. Then on each strip we wrote things that we are grateful for.

I loved reading through the things that they wrote. 

I hung up the giant grateful paper chain right above the table. 

Now all that we need is for Thanksgiving to get here and for the turkey to be cooked and dished out. I am so excited for our family Thanksgiving this year.

paper products: Zurchers 

straws, place mats: Target

turkey pinata: Zurchers

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Turkey Banner Decoration: Give Thanks Series

This Thanksgiving we are celebrating at home with just our sweet little family. Since there will be four kids and only two adults, I am going for a little more kid-friendly Thanksgiving dinner experience.

Our Thanksgiving decorations include the Turkey Rock Place Settings that I shared early this month on Thirty Handmade Days and this paint chip card Turkey Banner Decoration that I am sharing today on Whatever Dee-Dee Wants as part of her Give Thanks Series.

This is a new sew project. These also might just be the cutest little turkeys ever.

Head on over today to the Give Thanks Series and see how I put these cute little turkeys together.

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Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving wherever you are.

Even if you are somewhere where it is not Thanksgiving today.

Happy Be Grateful Day. 

We can all be more grateful.

I never got around to doing the "I am grateful for..." everyday post to Facebook or Instagram.

I enjoyed reading other people's daily gratitudes (totally a word).
They often led me to think of what I was grateful for.

So now, on this day of gratitude, I am going to make up for the lack of sharing my gratitude and I am going to list 30 things I am grateful for...

Yes, I know you are excited to read them all. Hahaha.

My list of 

I-Am-Grateful-For

1. my insanely hard-working and handsome husband

2. my oldest son who is so smart and quick to learn

3. my very honest and sincere Mr. Middle

4. my glasses wearing Little who is very generous with his hugs

5. my teeny tiny youngest who makes me belly laugh everyday

6. a strong body

7. a warm home full of love

8. the gospel of Jesus Christ

9. Jesus Christ

10. knowing I am a Child of God

11. Thomas S. Monson

12. scriptures to lead and guide me

13. the smell of rain

14. a functioning car

15. good friends who care about me

16. good friends for my boys

17. parents who raised me right

18. five of the funniest and bestest siblings a person could have

19. parents who raised my husband right

20. food on my table

21. exercise

22. an education

23. talents and strengths

24. opportunities to overcome my weaknesses

25. music that stirs my soul

26. family who loves and supports us

27. lazy days

28. opportunities to serve

29. The House of the Lord

30. patience shown me

Thank you for letting me list some of the things I am grateful for.

I am grateful for all the support I get. From you, my readers, as well.

I hope that you have a very special and family and/or friend filled day.

Simple and Pretty Disposable Thanksgiving Place Setting

 

Sometimes a formal Thanksgiving dinner isn't really possible. There might be more people coming than formal dishes available. I mean, could you imagine washing thirty sets of dishes. Yuck. No bueno. There might be so much going on that the clean up needs to be more simple. You know, like needing to take a nap or watch a football game.

Basically, there are all kinds of circumstances in which disposable would be better. 

However, using disposable either means boring OR expensive. You either have to use everyday picnic type paper product...YAWN. Or you have to splurge on the really pretty, unique paper products ordered online. Times one pretty complete place setting by 20 and that can add up.

Good news, it doesn't have to be either/or. There is a way to make those disposable paper products fancy enough for Thanksgiving, but not too fancy that you won't mind just tossing it when all the eating is done.

I was able to take normal paper products that I found a The Mart, and with a little umph and some golden sparkle I made them all fancy for Thanksgiving.

Here is the run down of what I did to create this Simple and Pretty Disposable Thanksgiving Place Setting--

I used a gold Sharpie to embellish a plain plate. I also used it to write on clear plastic cups.

To continue with all the gold awesomeness, I spray painted cake boards and turned them into chargers. Here is a hint...after you spray paint the chargers leave them in your garage and let them air out for a day before you bring them in.

I splurged a little on nicer napkins. I believe a splurge was totally allowed since everything else was so cheap cost efficient.

I made an envelope to hold the utensils out of a brown lunch sack. I also decided to use the envelope  as the name card. I created a label in PicMonkey. Then I printed it on the lunch sack, like HERE.

Put everything all together, and you are practically ready to eat.

 

 

Now even a disposable place setting can be lovely. Seriously, I had way too much fun doing this. I love Thanksgiving.

Love it. I only have a few more days!

Thanksgiving Teacher Gift: Hand Pies

This year at the Little Men's school I am in charge of teacher appreciation. If you follow me on Instagram (and I totally think that you should...hehehe...@larissa_anotherday), then you have already seen a sneak peak of these little thankful pies.

I made simple hand pies with premade pie crusts and canned pie filling. So easy. I cut circles out using the top of a glass. Filled each pastry with one tablespoon of pie filling. Then I topped each pie with another circle of pie crust and sealed it with the tongs of a fork. Bake. Cool.

Then I packaged them all up.

I used really simple supplies, all which I bought from The Mart.

I flattened a cupcake liner and used it to lay the pie on. Then I put the pie into a paper CD envelope.

I used a paper doily and a small flattened truffle paper liner for the tags.

I hand wrote a little message in a gold Sharpie...my new favorite thing.

I used a plain clothespin to attach the tag. Then I just repeated a bunch of times...enough for all our teachers.

I am grateful for good teachers. I kind of geek out over thinking of ways to thank our teachers. I had a lot of fun with these little Thanksgiving pies.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!