With Christmas season in full swing, it’s hard to believe that we were feasting on turkey and cranberry sauce just nine days ago. We hosted Thankgiving dinner at our house this year, but I can’t take any credit for cooking for 29 people, since everyone who came contributed part of the meal. We squeezed 22 adults around our regular dining table (fully extended to 16.5 feet!), and put the seven kids at a separate table.

I wanted everyone at the main table to be able to enjoy the decorations, so I ditched the traditional idea of one or two centerpieces and instead created a long runner that stretched from end to end. I laid a burlap garland on top of a long strip of kraft paper and anchored it with gourds, apples, and slim white flowerpots full of wheat and popcorn kernels. (That’s blue and red popcorn you see in the picture below.)

In each flowerpot, I stuck a bamboo skewer (painted white) with paper leaves glued on. During the meal, people were invited to write things they were thankful for on the leaves as a visual reminder of what we were celebrating that day.

That evening our family read through everything that people had jotted down earlier in the day, and it was fun to see recurring themes — and an occasional unexpected item like dirt!

So simple, so easy, so thankful.

I enjoy bringing touches of fall into our home with funky gourds, bright orange pumpkins, and potted mums, but I don’t have any seasonal decor that specifically relates to Thanksgiving. Turkeys and cornucopias aren’t really my thing, so I decided to string up a few words that will remind our family to be thankful during the weeks leading up to the holiday.

Last night I cut the letters out of kraft paper, and then this morning before work I punched two holes in each letter and strung them up with some monofilament fishing line. I hung them from two suction cup hooks and called the project complete. Thanks to Sally of Shim&Sons for the project inspiration!

This morning I’m thankful for sunshine, oats, and Gladware/Ziploc containers (even though I feel like I wash a million of them every day). What are you giving thanks for today?

rachel+paper = my new paper goods shop!

My little online shop is currently stocked with gift tags, garlands, and confetti, but I will continue to add a wider variety of items as I create them. For a long time, I’ve been wanting to sell things that I’ve made, and I’m finally turning that dream into a reality. Come visit!

P.S. If you live locally and can arrange for your items to be easily hand-delivered, contact me for a code to use for free shipping.

When the Easter egg piñata I made this week is destroyed on Sunday afternoon, a whole lot of candy and a few bits of homemade crepe paper confetti will fall from the sky. I know the kids will be too busy scrambling for the candy to care about the confetti, but I’ll enjoy it. And I snapped a few pictures of it so you can enjoy it too.

The paper is actually just crepe paper streamers, and the circles were cut out with a 3/4″ punch. I folded the paper and punched four layers at a time.

I’m sure the confetti doesn’t look as lovely now that it’s stuffed inside the piñata with the Laffy Taffy, Nerds, and Starburst… but it was fun to make!

Although my creative endeavors don’t always turn out as I had pictured them in my head, sometimes they come very, very close. Tonight’s project was one of those lucky times. I was itching to do something creative, so I pulled out some paint and paper and made a little calendar for the month of March.

I cut a 4×6″ piece of white cardstock, drew light gridlines with a pencil, and painted the squares with three shades of green acrylic paint. After the paint dried, I erased the gridlines, wrote the date on each square with a silver metallic marker, and added the word “March.” My final step was to cut a piece of foam core to size and mount the calendar to the foam core with a glue stick.

The calendar isn’t exactly centered on the paper, and my cursive script leaves a bit to be desired, but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.

I took a few tiny packets of my paper heart confetti with me to Virginia this past weekend so I could give them to some friends there.

Here’s where they are now.

{packets 1 + 2} – I had breakfast with my friends Lisa and Rebecca on Saturday morning and gave them each a packet.

{packet 3} – Later that morning I drove past my friend Rachel’s house and tucked a packet of confetti in her front door when she wasn’t home. I didn’t leave a note or anything, but she reads my blog, so I knew she would figure out who her secret admirer is.

{packet 4} – On Saturday evening, I gave my last packet of confetti to my friend Laura who I sat next to at a basketball game. She’s also a reader of this blog, so it wasn’t the first time she had seen the confetti.

I left all of my confetti with my friends in Virginia, but I did return home with something handmade. While I was eating breakfast at Lisa’s house, her husband Wendell was out in his woodshop making pens. Yes, making them. He actually made two pens while we were eating breakfast, and then he offered me either one of those two or one that he had made previously.

I chose this lovely walnut pen. Isn’t it beautiful?!

It feels heavy and classy, and when I used it to write out my grocery list this afternoon, it made milk and bananas seem so important.

Wendell doesn’t sell his pens yet, and when he does, he will probably sell them locally, rather than online, so I feel lucky to have this pen!