Planning Ahead Pays Off in the Form of Forest Themed Thanksgiving Dinnerware

*Thanks to everyone who entered the coupons.com giveaway for a Home Depot or Amazon gift card. The winner is......The Cape on the Corner! congratulations, and check your e-mail if you haven't already :)

Every year, for the past several years, we've hosted Thanksgiving dinner for Dave's extended family (his parents and aunt and uncle, specifically). And last year, what with our new formal dining room and all, I finally got around to setting a pretty table for the occasion. Well, I thought it was pretty.

My big splurge was the Patch NYC dessert plates from Target. I love them. Then I picked up plain white dinner plates from TJ Maxx and those chargers from, I think, Hobby Lobby.

I'm planning on a very similar table this year....I may switch up the centerpiece some, because I feel like I should, but same plates, same black and white and gold theme.

But one thing that made my table a little less beautiful last year was my lack of coordinating serving dishes. I did have this bowl and platter that my mom picked up for me (again from TJ  Maxx, I believe)

And then I had these salt and pepper shakers from Target:

And when I ordered the plates, I couldn't resist adding in this clearanced serving bowl:

But there's a lot of food floating around at Thanksgiving, so we still had to use some serving dishes that......didn't go! Horrors.

So I've made it my mission to pick up more white serving dishes before this coming Thanksgiving. And I've made great progress. And an interesting trend has developed completely by accident: not only do I have a white/black/gold theme going on, I have a woodland creature/forest theme going on! Which pleases me greatly. Sometimes the universe tells you that you need forest themed fancy dishes by putting them in the thrift stores for you. Message received, universe!

Okay, actually, this first thing is the only thrift find so far:

But do you see what that is?! It's a mushroom sugar and butter dish set! Google has yielded many images of these exact same pieces painted in a startling variety of colors, so I'm gathering this was a popular paint-your-own-pottery set at some point. The ones on Etsy all claim to be from the 70's. Maybe? I don't know. I'm just glad mine is painted white instead of purple and yellow (true story).

Then one day I got a text from my friend Kristi letting me know that Tuesday Morning had octopus pillows on clearance. Of course I got an octopus pillow. But I also spotted these bowls:

Right? So I had to buy those. When one of those owls is wearing a heaping hat of mashed potatoes, I'm going to be very happy indeed.

And, finally, my elusive gravy boat! I've never had a real gravy boat before. We've always improvised, and it's never felt very....grown up. So I've been on the hunt for a white gravy boat all year. I was shocked when exactly what I needed turned up a couple of weeks ago....in the Dollar Spot at Target! It was one of the $3 things, not really a dollar, but that's okay. $3 for a perfectly serviceable and attractive ceramic gravy boat (I felt like I needed to make it clear that's it not plastic. But a plastic gravy boat would be really weird, wouldn't it?) is a good deal in my book:

I'll still be keeping my eye open for more between now and Thanksgiving, but I think we're in pretty decent shape now.

Halloween Tree with a Tiny Banner

Remember a few weeks ago when I posted about my mini kitchen makeover that included all sorts of blog standards like a chalkboard wall, a farmhouse table, and Revere Pewter walls? Well. I decided to keep it up by doing a craft project involving a banner AND book pages!

And I can totally see why everyone wants to make tiny little banners and things out of book pages, because OMG. This is the most adorable thing I've ever done. In a spooky sort of way, I mean.

Here. I couldn't decide, so I made two pictures with words for this one:

I didn't know which one to lead with, because this is like two projects in one! More for your money: that's what you get here at Boxy Colonial.

Anyway. As evidenced by the raven-embellished planter boxes we made last week, we're gearing up for an Edgar Allan Poe inspired Halloween around these parts. Well, mostly just The Raven. Next year we're getting all Tell Tale Heart and ripping up floor boards! Not really.

I have a whole Halloween display on my buffet with a couple of other crafty-ish projects to show you later this week, but today you only get to see my Halloween tree. It will take me long enough to talk about that part. BELIEVE me.

I found this tree made out of twisted black metal at the thrift store a few weeks ago. Judging from that price tag, I paid $3.03 for it:

Then it sat around for awhile and I tried to decide what to do with it. It has these round things on it that I assume are supposed to hold candles. But I didn't put candles on it.

Then I spotted these mini purple lights at Target the other day:

$3.50, so we're up to $6.53 invested in this thing. I'll just go ahead and say, so that I don't forget later, that the only other thing I bought was some twine for something like $1.25, so we'll round up and call it an $8 project.

I wrapped the lights around the tree and was pleased with the results. And I already had the beginnings of a banner plan swirling around in my head, but I wanted something to hang from it, too. Then, when I was going through the Halloween box in the basement, I found this!

Not the orange kitty, the other thing. I have no idea why I bought this to start with; I can't remember ever doing anything with it. But there it was, festooned with black and orangey gold plastic balls.

So I disassembled it and hung the balls on the tree. And stood back to admire the results. Now all it needed was a tiny little banner.

Ideally I would have cut up some Poe for this, but I didn't have any handy that I didn't mind destroying. So instead I went with this falling apart copy of All the King's Men (don't worry; I have another, not falling apart copy), a book I like to refer to as my favorite book that I've never managed to make it all the way through. Ahem.

It was not a very spooky book, but that Robert Penn Warren did have a bit of a potty mouth, so no one should look too carefully at the text behind my nevermore letters.

I just drew a little banner shape and then folded the pages so that I could cut a bunch out at once:

I just did the letters freehand, figuring it would not be too arduous since they're so tiny:

I fretted for awhile about how I was going to string the letters together. I kept thinking I'd need to punch holes in them and put the string through that and that the book pages were too fragile to handle it....and then I remembered: what can do anything? Scotch tape can do anything! I bought the aforementioned black twine:

And then I flipped it over, ready to be dazzled by my own handiwork.

Umm. This is why I don't sew. Exceptionally poor spatial reasoning skills. Fortunately, they all came off without ripping.

Much better!

Then I put it on my tree, and it looked so beautiful I almost cried. I love it. I'm going to decorate everything in my house with a tiny banner. Like on my kitchen chairs, I'll just put tiny banners that say "chair." Or whatever.

I haven't plugged in the extension cord yet, so I had to drag it into the kitchen to take this one:

Linking with:

The Inspiration Gallery

Link Party-Palooza

Quick 4th of July Project!

I'm always on the lookout for crafts even I can't am unlikely to screw up. So when I came across these super cute pinwheels awhile back on Circusberry, I pinned them immediately:

Circusberry

....and then, a couple of days ago, I did something even better: I actually MADE some! Crazy idea, right? You pin something and then you make it. 

As part of my ongoing attempt to become a seasonal decorator, I decided to crank out some 4th of July themed pinwheels. I went to Hobby Lobby and came home with this stuff:

4th of July-y scrapbook paper, decorative brads, and paper straws. I wanted just plain blue or red straws, but the most neutral I could find were these black chevron ones. Now I can have a fashionable and environmentally friendly kids' birthday party with the extras! 

I just followed along with the Circusberry tutorial. If I don't make any sense, go over there and see what she says!

1. Cut out a 4 or 5 inch square from your scrapbook paper. This is where I realized that the tutorial called for double sided scrapbook paper. Oops. More on that later. This first pinwheel was not double sided.

2. Draw lines diagonally across your square.

3. Cut along the lines toward the middle, leaving about 1/2 inch uncut.

4. Poke a hole through the middle and in the left corner of each triangle section. I wasn't sure what to poke holes with, so I, uhh, found this thing in my silverware drawer and used it. It worked pretty well. Be careful; it's sharp!

5. Fold each hole-poked corner down toward the center, one at a time, inserting the brad through each layer (so you're kind of tucking each new layer under the one that comes before it, working the brad from the outside in). Once you have all the triangles folded down, poke the brad through the center hole.

6. Hardest part! Paper straws are tougher than they look! Flatten one end of the straw and poke a hole through it. Insert brad through this hole to attach the pinwheel, spread the tabs out, and you're done!

Okay, so then I thought, "you know what's pretty much the same as double sided scrapbook paper? Two sheets of scrapbook paper taped together with double sided tape!" 

So I did the rest of them like that. Same process, only taping the two sheets together first.

Super easy! Once I got going, I could do one in maybe 5 minutes. 

Then I tossed some other stuff together (stack of books!) and made a display. Said display is supposed to be in the dining room, but I was too lazy to clean off the buffet before I took pictures. I'm pacing myself.

Linking with:
Stone Gable's Tutorials, Tips, and Tidbits
Hookin' Up with House of Hepworths
The Shabby Nest's Frugal Friday
Summer Camp Link Party
Tatertots and Jello Weekend Wrap Up Party
Monday Funday
Give Me the Goods Monday
Tuesday's Treasures at My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia

Easter Photo Spew

Saturday we did all our our Easter prep work. Like the egg dyeing. And my trip to Target to get the last minute egg dyeing kit. Some time last week I thought maybe I was going to find some amazing homemade egg dye recipe to make with the kids. Then I looked up recipes, and the first one I read started with, "take a pound of blueberries...." And then I decided I'd just get the $1.50 kit from Target instead of spending several times that on a pound of blueberries that we wouldn't even get to eat (and that just for the BLUE eggs).

So, much like with blueberries, I can't stand the thought of wasting eggs just to make them look pretty. Partially because we buy expensive happy eggs because we used to have chickens, and I love chickens, and I don't want the ones who lay our eggs to be sad. And Dave's the only one here who much cares for hard-boiled eggs. All of this to say....I only let the kids dye six eggs. Two eggs each! This is going to be one of the stories they tell about me when they grow up to demonstrate how crazy their mother is. Or how much she loves chickens. Same thing, pretty much.

Anyway, here they are, decorating their stingy allowance of eggs. The cheap egg dyeing kit came with a "magic crayon" so that one can draw designs on the egg that the dye won't cover up.

I appreciated how pretty the eggs looked being dyed in our Ikea bowls. Although I realized too late they were too shallow for submerged eggs. But we turned them around after a few minutes (or transferred them to a different color), and that all worked out fine.

Six eggs!

Next, we moved on filling up eggs for the next day's egg hunt at my grandparents' house:

Abe sat around having really pretty blue eyes while this was going on:

For our final Saturday task, we made bunny racecars!

I found this idea for bunny race cars made out of Reese's eggs at Kitchen Fun with My Three Sons, and I knew I had to make them. Because look at them! Annie's even makes gluten-free bunny cookies. Let me tell you, never will you get so much credit for doing so little as when you make Reese's egg bunny race cars. People love these. They love them on facebook and then they love them at Easter dinner at your grandparents'. But they are SUPER easy. No cooking; you just have to stick them together. The hardest part is cutting out the little slots for the bunnies without cracking the eggs too much.

We put out the Easter baskets after the kids went to bed. I'm nearly as stingy with Easter baskets as with eggs. Apparently, at some point since I was a kid, Easter has turned into this sort of Christmas-like event wherein you receive actual presents instead of just chocolate bunnies. But here we do a book and a chocolate bunny. Unless I don't make it to Target until the day before Easter, which is usually, and all the good bunnies are gone (they did have some horrifying "gummy bunnies" but I passed on those). Then they get a random assortment of what's left at Target. Like Peeps and Cadbury cream eggs. But I did  order the books from Amazon DAYS ago instead of just getting whatever they had in the measly Target book section like I usually do. These books are award winners!

Oh, Abe can't eat candy, so he got two books. One of them was too big for his basket (also purchased at Target on Saturday. I was pleased to see that they're still selling wooden baskets with cloth liners, so that his can coordinate with his big brothers').

Sunday morning we....tried to go to church. Really, we did! We're between churches at the moment, and Ari had expressed some curiosity about the Catholic church that is in our backyard (well, it's right behind our backyard, anyway). It's the church I went to as a kid, actually, and that my grandparents (not the egg hunt grandparents, though) went to for a very long time. So, even though I'm not Catholic anymore, we thought it might be nice to go over there, have the kids see the church I went to when I was young, and, in the bargain, not have to deal with Easter church traffic, since we could walk there. Plus it would be kind of lame to show up for the first time at a church you might actually go to long term on Easter.

We got there a good 20 minutes before the 11 o'clock mass started and.....yeah. It was completely packed. Completely. So, we walked back home, feeling kind of sheepish. But I did take this nice picture of the kids dressed up:

Too bad they didn't have a plaid shirt in Abe's size. But the plaid shirts have sort of that same aqua color in them, so it all kind of works. Ari didn't want to match. But he didn't mind coordinating.

And then to my grandparents' house to visit with extended family and have (in between rain showers) an egg hunt. I am not thrilled with my egg hunt pictures for the most part (the kids kept moving). But here's what I've got:

So there you have it.

We spent today working on big spring break project #1. And we're not finished yet. But tomorrow we're changing gears and working on big project #2 some. So who knows when I'll actually get to post about said projects. Hoping to get to a couple of smaller projects, too, though!