Blog Parties

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Sunday Favorites-Thanksgiving decor 2008

It's time for another Sunday Favorites hosted by Chari over at Happy to Design. Be sure to stop by her blog to see this weeks participants. I love this weekly party as we get to repost something from the past.

This week I'm going to share a post about my Thanksgiving decor from last year. This originally posted on my family blog Manning Family Tree on 11/10/08.

I'm hoping that I will get my Thanksgiving decorating for this year completed today. If so, I will share later in the week. Until then, enjoy seeing last years decor. Then you'll have something to compare it to later.

**************************************************
It's a good thing that I have this blog & my weekly show and tell post, otherwise I might not ever get anything done around my house. I need something to motivate me. This week we are to post about anything Thanksgiving. I decided this would motivate me to decorate my house for Thanksgiving.

Poor Thanksgiving, it is one of those holidays that almost gets forgotten. Except for the food part. What I mean is, the decorating part almost gets forgotten. I know a lot of people who decorate for Halloween & then go right into decorating for Christmas. The stores do it, so why not everyone else?

I personally love decorating for Thanksgiving or fall in general. So this weekend I took down all the Halloween decor & put up Thanksgiving. I hate putting away decorations, it is much more fun to put them up than to take them down & put them away. This takes me all day to do. Christmas will be worse. It usually takes me a weekend or two to complete my Christmas decorating as I put up 2 Christmas trees.

I love decorating for each holiday, but it can be a real pain as well, and I mean literally. I store all my holiday decorations up in the loft in our garage. But this requires me climbing up & down a ladder to the loft area & walking hunched over like the hunch back of Notre Dame, in order to retrieve my boxes of decorations. Usually I hit my head once or twice on the rafters and say a few choice words that I can not repeat here. I just have to be real careful not to hit my head on a nail.

Once I have located the boxes I need (no easy task if you have seen my loft area), I have to maneuver the boxes I need through the maze of boxes I don't need and carry them one by one down the ladder. I have nightmares of falling but so far I haven't (knock on wood).

Then I have to put back all the boxes of decorations from the holiday that I just packed up. This requires doing the whole process over but in reverse. And pushing full boxes up the ladder is much harder than carrying them down. Once up in the loft I usually hit my head again on the rafters at least once or twice, say a few more choice words & vow that it won't happen again.

Now the fun can actually begin. I can decorate. I love decorating, just wish it didn't involve the packing & retrieving part. The photos I took are just of my family room & part of my kitchen area. I haven't finished setting my table. I just have a centerpiece. I forgot to take a photo of the top of my armoire. Forgot to do that for Halloween as well. Maybe as it involves standing on a chair & that falling nightmare comes to mind. Even if it would cause less damage falling from a dining room chair than from a 8 foot ladder.

Here is part of my kitchen area. I have purchased over the past few years a set of turkey plates to use for Thanksgiving dinner. I put quite a few up for decor until Thanksgiving dinner (don't worry I wash them first before serving dinner on them). I think I have enough plates to serve 20-24 people. That is the real reason we have Thanksgiving dinner at my house. I have the turkey plates!!!
This photo is the little shelf to the left of my couch in my family room. It pretty much looks the same as Halloween except I took down the Halloween decor & put up a few small pumpkins & a small turkey candle tin.

This is the old trunk that is to the left of my couch. I got this from Jeannette (my SIL). She was going to get rid of it a few years back & I said "I will take that". It's great for storing blankets. I just need Mike (my hubby) to cut me a piece of glass for the top. It is hard to place items on it the way it is. I put a cornucopia filled with dried veggies & leaves. This cornucopia is the first Thanksgiving decor item that I ever purchased and that was about 25 years ago (don't worry the dried veggies & leaves aren't that old). The small orange pumpkins are actually salt & pepper shakers. The big cream pumpkin is the one I ordered from Crate & Barrel a few weeks back. This is the 2nd one they had to ship me. The first one came broke. But they were great on sending me a replacement. I didn't even have to send the broken one back, they took my word that the original came broken. Nice to know that my word counts for something in this day & age. I forgot to put candles in my cherub candle holders (one of my favorite thrift store finds).

Here is my chandelier over my kitchen table. I loved my funny faces from Halloween so I decided to use the same concept for Thanksgiving. But instead of funny faces with googly eyes, I opted for copies of vintage Thanksgiving cards. I planned on using all orange curly ribbon but I ran out, so I had to add some purple ribbon.

This vignette is on a small chest next to the end of my kitchen cabinets. I filled the apothecary jar with fake pumpkins & veggies. Added a small pumpkin candle & filled my frames with copies of vintage Thanksgiving cards. They usually have rose prints in them.

This is my china hutch in my family room. Here is more of my turkey plates & bowls. I painted the pilgrim people about 10 years ago or so. They were my first tole painting project. Pretty good if I don't say so myself. Too bad I haven't really painted since I quite taking lessons. When you are paying someone for lessons, it motivates you to paint. Wish I had kept up with my painting. I didn't get a chance to polish my tea & coffee set (don't worry, they are for show only. I never drink coffee or tea. Yuck!). The 2 white fabric pumpkins on the right were hand made for me by our home teachers wife last year. I love them!! The little white pumpkin on the left is one of the smaller pumpkins from Crate & Barrel.
Here is my mantel. I put pumpkin candles (they smell yummy) in the hurricane jars & put up 2 vintage Thanksgiving cards (I get the images from a CD I bought off of ebay). I love vintage holiday prints or any vintage prints for that matter.

This is my kitchen table. I put a fabric turkey & 3 fabric pumpkins all around the candelabra. I then placed a fall garland around everything & threw in some pumpkin scatters.
Well there you have my Thanksgivingish (I know this is not a real word) family room & part of my kitchen. Tomorrow I may post photos of my dining table in my living room area. I found another blog that on Tuesdays shows off peoples tablescapes & if I get my table done, I might join in on their fun & post my own tablescape. That is, if I can find where I stashed my goblets. Oh, and I also bought some new silverware from Ross but when I got it home found out that someone had stolen all the forks out of it (except for the 2 on the front). So I need to take it back. I hope they will take my word that the forks were already missing & don't think that I stole the forks. I'll keep you posted on if they do or not. I'm bummed though as that was the only set that I liked. I guess I'll have to scope out a different Ross to see if I can find them again. This time I will be looking in the box before buying. I hate taking things back.

Next week we will again be posting "Anything Thanksgiving". If I don't post my tablescape photos tomorrow, I may do it then. Or I may just post about something I am thankful for. What are you thankful for? Be sure & post next Monday. Or you can post about it anytime if you would prefer.

Kim

9 comments:

  1. Beautiful Thanksgivingish decor. Love the word! It inspire me to do some of my own. Hopefully I can get it photographed today. Love your pilgrims. I have been searching high and low for pilgrims and I just can't find any. I know Hallmark probably has them, but I'm looking for affordable ones...lol.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kim,
    I love your hutch display, your chandelier and your centerpiece. Isn't fall the best??

    ReplyDelete
  3. great decorations, my faves are the pink turkey plates, very cool :D

    ReplyDelete
  4. "You always have Thanksgiving at your house because you have the turkey plates." I love it!
    Don't you mean "Thanksgiving is always at my house because I am the most fun person in the family?"

    Love your decor! Especially the kitchen table.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi Girlfriend...

    So happy to see you again for Sunday Favorites, Girl! I really enjoyed seeing last year's Thanksgiving decor...you always do everything up so beautifully! And...I'm tellin' ya...you have more energy and ambition than I have! I put up autumn decor at the beginning of September and call it good till Christmas! Hehe! All the Autumn holdays have to survive off of it!

    Ohhh...I do love your turkey dishes! They're gorgeous!!! Where did you find them? Haven't ever seen them done in the red transferware before! So...sooo pretty! So you always have Thanksgiving at your place, huh? Do you have a large gathering? Russell and I were just talking about it this morning...it will just be Darrin, Danielle, and us this year! It's kind of hard...this will be the first holiday spent without Russ' dad!

    Well Darlin'...just keep all of those creative ideas coming! You're such an inspiration to me!!! Ohhh...I did want to say how much I love how you decorate your chandelier...and I love the old vintage Thanksgiving cards!!!

    Love ya,
    Chari

    ReplyDelete
  6. Kim, so much eye candy! I ♥ the display with the red/white dishes, silver and the cake plates. The little Pilgrim people are cute, you did a great job on them. Did you spray paint the candelabra? I found a brass one the other day; sprayed it black, but forgot the before picture!

    What a bummer with the stolen forks. I am another that hates taking things back.

    Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Very nice. I see a white ceramic pumpkin in there - - - they seem to be all the RAGE this fall!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Wow! You are so the holiday decorating queen! I love it all. So much fun!
    Kate

    ReplyDelete
  9. Looks so warm and inviting and cozy. You have a great touch!

    ReplyDelete