thanksgiving came early this year: the decorations

All pictures in this post courtesy of Emily Kiel.

I could not let this occasion pass us by without adding some personal touches.  And everything turned out exactly how I pictured!  With everyone coming for the weekend, I wanted to create some sort of interactive way to express the things that we are thankful for.  Thus became the birth of the Thankful Tree.  I have a metal/wire tree that I hang season appropriate elements from.  This made the perfect tree base for our Thankful Tree.  I attached a 'thankful' verse to the top.

1 Chronicles 16:34

'Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good: his love endures forever.'

I then [individually!?!?] cut out and strung several different colors & shapes of leaves.  [Now that I am working full-time I am going to have to invest in a Cricut!!!]  Throughout the day, people walked by and added to the tree.  My 'A Job!!!' was the first to go up.  Interestingly, it seemed that many people were thankful for that as well—there are several 'Ellen's job!' leaves hanging from the limbs.  [It is safe to assume that the handwriting on these belong to Dad, Mom, & Jeff.  Ha!]

The sugar loaf mold & candles that I gave my parents a few years ago
made the perfect, 'pilgrim' appropriate centerpiece.

'Give thanks' banner

I had a lot of fun designing and creating the name cards.  I bought a bag of little pumpkins for another party a few weeks ago and the little guys have been sitting around various corners and displays of the kitchen since practically begging me to let them wear Indian Head Dresses.  So I made each of them a little head dress and, with just the right number of pumpkins, decided that the boys would all be Indians.  I Googled 'Indian Names' and came across a list of Indian names of chiefs, cities, and other related terms and hand-selected the perfect name for each guy.


And you can't have Thanksgiving without Pilgrims, can you?!  Therefor, we the females had to be Pilgrims.  [Besides, letting the guys be chiefs for a day was the least we could do ;)]  Miraculously we had 4 red apples in the fridge.  It was meant to be!  Little bonnets were fashioned out of off-white card stock and jute for the girls' name cards. 

Dad's name card read 'Papakeechee' which means 'flat belly'.  Dad has worked
to lose almost 30 pounds this year so this was most appropriate!

Ellen & Quapaw [Downstream People].  Emily was thoughtful
enough to take 'prom pictures' of each of the couples :)