thanksgiving place cards.

I just woke up and I think I'll skip breakfast this morning, I'm still so stuffed.  We enjoyed an epic thanksgiving yesterday, full of amazing food and beautiful family celebrations.



I always like to papercraft the place cards for the thanksgiving table. Given the fact that last year, my brother-in-law took a bite out of at least 3 cookie place cards (i'm still annoyed, can you tell? haha) I decided to dress up the kids table exclusively. It was a passive/aggressive play, I know...

I wanted to show off the place cards and my favorite new fall decorations before we headed over to my mom's for the real deal, so I staged a little something in my kitchen just for you.



My giant acorn found a new friend in the squirrel I picked up from Target this year.  And they both inspired the place-cards that I illustrated:



He's popping out of his own giant acorn - hee.



I colored the image and cut it out using a lawn fawn circle die, bending back a second circle that was adhered to the back so it could stand up.

As an aside: my kids all understand this whole paper-crafting thing I do, but my 9 year old cousin (who is now, since this summer, taller than I am!) was all: what is this? what do I do with it? it's so cute!

ha.



I hope you like them! I'm having so much fun learning Illustrator and trying to grow my skills.

Special props to my man, who didn't say anything when I asked if he would duck out at lunchtime to pick me some acorns and pinecones. He came back with a big bag of each. I love him.

♥.

thanksgiving postcards.

Happy thanksgiving, Canadians!  I know Americans still have more than a month before they can enjoy their big turkey dinner, but in the meantime I wanted to share something small that I crafted for the family.



Have you seen the new release from Simon Says Stamp? I love the new ugly sweater stamp sets that Kristina designed, but I wished for a bigger sweater; something to fit all of my fun lawn fawn stamps.

So I drew my own.



I illustrated a sweater, printed them 4 to a sheet and stamped them with the adorable acorn and fox from lawn fawn's into the woods set.

The sweaters are pretty big, and I didn't want to waste too much copic ink, so I sponged on the main sweater color. It's not perfect, since I didn't mask the edges, but it's not bothering me too much.

I made 4 of them: one for each of my kids, and my hubby too.  On the back, I wrote each one of them a little note.



Just a little way to celebrate the spirit of the thanksgiving holiday, and tell each one of them how blessed I am because of them.

I hope you like them, and the sweaters! I have a feeling you'll see them again sometime. hee.

♥.

happy thanksgiving!

It's just an ordinary Thursday for me today, but if you are celebrating Thanksgiving today then this little post is just for you.

Be sure to:

• wear stretchy pants
• starve yourself until the big meal
• don't start with anything alcoholic after point no. 2
• dig in without guilt 
• don't forget the wishbone

If you have a little bit of downtime today, I'm rounding up some of my favorite Just ME thanksgiving projects:

- yummy thanksgiving cookie place-cards (at least I got pictures before my brother-in-law chomped into each and every cookie. bah.)
- a chalkboard thank you, using florals and christmas stamps
- you are sweet as pie. i mean it.
- be sure to count your many blessings today...
- and make it about more than just the food.

♥.

be thankful {into the woods paper collection}

It's lawn fawn inspiration week!  The design team is showcasing one of the new paper collections: "into the woods."  The new lawn fawn patterned papers are my favorite ones to date!  Here's what I made for you today:



There's a children's song that goes "because a thankful heart is a happy heart, I'm glad for what I have, that's an easy way to start."

I love that.  So, this is how our family will be working on being more grateful...

From the bucket full of die-cut leaves, we'll take one and write down something we're thankful for.

And then clip it up.  I started us off with very sweeping statements, but I will try to get the kids to be more specific as time goes on.  By thanksgiving, we should have a whole bucketful of thankfulness to look back on and be grateful for...



Some project details:

I cut down a woodgrain pattern to fit inside the 8x10 picture frame.  The letters were adhered onto the woodgrain paper, and fitted into the frame.

The mini clothespins were covered with another paper from the same collection.  I sanded the edges all around to give a cleaner look.  They were adhered to the outside of the frame.

The only time-consuming thing about this project was die-cutting all of the leaves.  But they were so pretty, with their stitched detailing, that I die-cut a bunch of them in white and sewed them into a garland.  It turned out to be my favorite part of all:



I hope you like it ♥.

Be sure to check out the lawn fawn blog for more "into the woods" inspiration!