Thankful Banner

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday...I think I've mentioned that before. I love spending time with family around a big meal and not having to worry about gifts, costumes, or anything else; just family and lots of food. The other day when I went shopping I quickly saw that Thanksgiving isn't a top priority in the retail industry. Every store I went to was all decked out and ready for Christmas. My house isn't ready for Christmas, not even close. We are ready for Thanksgiving though (I bought two turkeys today). Because there isn't much you can buy as far as Thanksgiving decor I made my own.
I gathered a few things from around the house and a few things from the Pebbles Home+Made collection by Jen Hadfield of Tater-tots and Jello. I grabbed a few sheets of the Home+made Burlap Cardstock. This burlap is SO much fun to work with. If you haven't played with it yet, you really need to! I cut the burlap into a pendant shape using the die set from the Home+Made collection. I cut the sheet of 12x12 burlap in half so that it would fit in by Cuttlebug machine.

 After I had all the pendant shapes cut out I grabbed an old paperback book that I rescued from the discard pile at the library. I tore a few pages out of the book and then cut them to the length that I needed.

 I wanted the burlap to hang just a little bit lower than the book page

Then I cut the teal portion using the die set too.

I stitched 3 of the layers together with my sewing machine. (the teal layer, the burlap layer, and the book page.

The rest of the pieces I cut using my silhouette. Once I had all my pieces cut I started layering. This banner simply consists of lots of layers.

Because I don't have a mantle right now I decorate my piano as a mantle. Without further ado, here is my Thanksgiving piano (mantle):

 Other than the banner my favorite part of my Thanksgiving decorations is the elk antler. My oldest boy found this when he was deer hunting this fall. He was so excited and so was I. I knew I could find a place for it in my living room ;)

 I framed a printable I found HERE at Daisy Cottage Designs. It was so easy to print and then I just stuck it in a frame I found at the thrift store the other day. The large frame in the back is also a frame I found at the thrift store and painted it with Krylon Champagne Spray Paint it's the most amazing color! There will be a lot more things painted with this around my house.

Is your home decorated for Thanksgiving or do you skip over Thanksgiving decor and go straight to Christmas? I should say that while I don't have Christmas decorations up right now I probably will before Thanksgiving...just a day or two though!
(This post contains affiliate links, by purchasing items through these links you will not pay more for any of the items I will just receive a small percentage of the sale. These affiliate links help to keep my blog up and running.)

Thirty Grateful Days Mini Album

The girls over at Paper Issues have joined together to take photo each day for the month of November documenting things we're thankful for. Today I'd like to share with you a little bit of my album. I created it using the Thankful line from Bella Blvd. Here's what I came up with:

This album is going to be much bigger than I initially thought it would be. So when it's finished it will probably be in large binder rings instead of the clipboard album.
I created the album with heavy brown cardstock cut into 5x7 pieces. I completed the entire album before I added any photos. I left room for one photo each day and planned on having 2 pages for Thanksgiving day since I know I'll take more photos that day.
Here's an example of what the pages look like before I added photos.

I added a few embellishments when I added my journaling and photo(s)

 On this page the journaling is under the photo. I used designer tape as a hinge so you can flip the photo up and read the journaling. It's a bunch of "kissy stuff" as my kids would say because it's about the note my husband wrote to me.

 Most of the photos I printed at 3x3. If I had more than one photo sometimes I printed them at 2x2.

On days that I had too many photos to fit on one page I made pockets for multiple photos either out of patterned paper or transparencies.

Here's what the transparency pocket looks like. There are several photos tucked in there because it was my birthday on the 10th. I took lots of photos with the kids and the presents they had given me.

And here are a few more pages...

Even if you didn't take a photo a day grab a few photos that you've already taken and put together an album of the things that you're grateful for.
Thank you for stopping by! I appreciate you visiting my blog today.

Turkey Dinner 2012, Documented

With Thanksgiving just a couple of days away it's only appropriate that I share a project I created to document Thanksgiving of last year. My assignment from Bella Blvd was to create a layout using the Daily Chevies line combined with the Thankful line. Both of these lines are amazing (Thankful is one of my favorite collections ever) but I had no clue how I was going to pull them together with out it looking awkward.
When I got finished with the background it reminded me of a quilt, which is perfect for documenting a family turkey dinner.

So, let me know what you think. I kinda love it!

Have a great day, thanks for stopping by. Come back tomorrow. I'll be showing you my Thirty Grateful Days Album.

Say, "Thank You"

Hi there! I've got some cards to share with you today. Over on the American Crafts blog we've been celebrating gratitude. I created 3 Thank You cards. I've set a personal goal to tell people how much I appreciate them. One of the ways I'm going to do this is by sending out thank you notes more often.
I used the Autumn Crisp collection to create these cards.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by my blog today! I appreciate all of you!