Simple Thanksgiving

It was my turn for Thanksgiving this year, and I wanted to create a homey atmosphere with simple ideas for the table.  My daughter Leslie had seen an idea she wanted to try (http://news.holidash.com/).  All you’ll need is a half dozen Indian corn, tea light candle holders and candles.

Remove the colorful kernels from the cob (save them for later) and pull off the husks and soak them in a pan of water until pliable.

To make a rose, take one husk and roll it up around itself.  Take another husk and add a layer, twisting every turn or so (this is the trick)  Use about 6 husks for each rose.  Continue until you have as many roses as you’ll need.  For added interest, look for Indian corn that has a lot of color in the husk.

Secure the roses with rubber bands and let them dry.

Placed the corn kernels into any style glass candle holders and add tea light candles.  Your table is almost ready to be set.

To complete the table, we went to one of my favorite blogs, Bethany Hway’s b*spoke, for a freebie DIY printable download gratefulness place card.  Go to:  http://bspokeblog.com/?p=2770 . Aren’t these wonderfully simple?  We had colored paper and printed off gratefulness cards for each place, and then decided to use them as name-cards as well.  Thank you Beth for the gift of the gratefulness cards!

Here is the finished table pulling all the elements together, fun and simple!

But there was one more room we wanted to add a Thanksgiving touch to, so we printed more gratefulness cards and in 15 minutes we added our theme to the guest bathroom.  The frame with wires is from Pier 1, and I thought of using pictures in it originally, but the gratefulness cards were too cute to pass up.  We backed them with squares of colored paper and clothes-pinned them on along with real turkey feathers from the flock of turkeys which calls our neighborhood and nearby park home.

Our gratefulness theme was complete.  My favorite gratefulness card came from our first grandchild Reagan who is now all grown up at age 5.  She took the gratefulness challenge with childlike sincerity and wrote that she was grateful for her Auntie Leslie who helped create the beautiful table.  Love you Rea!  Here she is singing the ‘superman’ prayer before dinner with her parents.  I am so grateful, and that is what it’s all about.

{images: Laurie Ashbach}