San Francisco Bay Area, East Bay Photographer | Stephanie Morgan Photography

Every year the women’s ministry at our church hosts a dinner called Ladies Extravaganza. If you go, you can either host a table or attend as a guest. My friend Lindsey, who is way more crafty then me, hosted a table this year and let me help decorate! I envisioned a soft, vintage, rustic looking table and thanks to my new favorite site Pinterest, I had a ton of ideas in my head. I started by pinning things to a new board just for that night and then bouncing ideas off my friend to see what she thought. Once we finalized our decisions we got to work! Dummy me went to our local Jo-ann fabric store the day after Black Friday. It took 2 hours to get our supplies and get the fabric cut. AND I had Mason with me, who was actually a total trooper. Here’s what we ended up with.

I’ve seen this pin floating around and really wanted to try it. Didn’t quite come out like I planned. So that idea got scrapped:) I think I used too much paint and maybe the lace was too thin……another time perhaps.

I had some styrofoam cones leftover from a project a couple years ago that I never finished so we covered those with moss and made some stars out of branches from a dead tree we had in our backyard. That whole centerpiece cost us nothing since I already had all the materials. The biggest expense was the tablecloth that my mom lovingly made for me (and stayed up til 4am sewing it). Thanks mom! I think it cost about $35, which was half the price it would have cost since I waited 2 hours to get the fabric for it:) We also got burlap for a table runner down the middle. We got styrofoam balls and hot glued strips of fabric on some, burlap, and moss on the others for ornaments (which I forgot to take a picture of). Then we bought kraft boxes at Michael’s for .79 each. We already had the jute, extra burlap, green fabric, and tags. The greenery was leftover from the flower centerpiece. The lace ribbon was purchased with the fabric.

I found these mason jars at Wal-mart. They were 12 for $5.50. What I liked about them is that they were a really good size and they didn’t have any lettering on them. We used them for candles and for our glasses. We used doilies that my mom had for the placemats/chargers.

We were going to use a white creamer and sugar bowl, but Lindsey had these green dishes that looked so cute! So we went with those. We were going to use white napkins too, but then I remembered I had green napkins from a baby shower I hosted. The green gave the table a little pop of color and tied in with the greenery and moss for the centerpieces. We used different pieces of silverware that we each had and 2 different styles of white plates.

The flowers and greenery we got at Trader Joe’s. I usually get my flowers at Costco which would have cost $18 ($9 for the greenery and $9 for the white flowers), but Lindsey told me that she saw white flowers at Trader Joe’s so I decided to check there first hoping they sold some Christmas greens as well. Turns out they did, which saved us $9. The cans we used for vases were the bigger size enchilada sauce cans. Last year my parents cut down a tree in their yard and had some of the leftover stumps, which my friend’s husband cut for us so we could use them as a base for the flowers. I’ve seen them used as bases for flowers and as chargers, but it would be really cute to use them as coasters as well. I’m sure someone has already done it, I just haven’t seen it floating around.

And there you have it! Our Pinterest Christmas table.

I know many of you out there are supermoms and superwives and keep a clean and tidy house all the time. I’m convinced it’s because you have laundry rooms like the ones shown below. For those of you who aren’t, I’m here to make you feel a little bit better about your mess. For those of you who are, you’re probably appalled that I’m airing my dirty laundry over the internet, pun intended (only it’s actually clean laundry):) We have a two story house and upstairs is a loft. We used to have a pool table up there where we stored and folded our laundry, but when we decided to get a new couch downstairs the pool table had to go and the old couches replaced its spot. Our old couches are our new laundry station where we dump piles and piles of clean clothes where they wait sometimes over a week to be folded and put away. I’m sure this is not a shock to my parents. When I was growing up I used to leave bowls of milk from cereal in my room for days. So if you have rooms in your house that look like mine, rest assured you’re not alone.

                         needs to be folded                                              ready to be put away

Maybe if I had one of these laundry rooms, I’d feel more inspired!

 

 

All of these were found on pinterest. Here’s a link in case you’d like to view my boards. As I was thinking about writing this post, it reminded me of an email that was being passed around years ago about what to be thankful for.

Speaking about being thankful, I really want to start making traditions with our family. Mason’s communication is still probably too immature, but I think next year will work. I plan on making something like this (or you can download the free printable) for Thanksgiving and making a thankful tree.

 

 

Or, it would be cute to write thanks on kraft paper and make a garland like this (here’s the link to the printable):

 

Does your family have any holiday traditions?

Heading down a tiny rabbit trail now…..many of you know that Mason has had some speech difficulty. While he’s still really far behind his peers (probably talking like an 18 month old), he has progressed SO much! We can actually understand a lot of what he says and we’re finally able to communicate with him. And for that, I am extremely thankful. Here’s a video of him playing with the app, Talking Tom. Please forgive my stellar video skills; I’m still learning how to use it on my new camera, plus Mason kept moving around.

 

And finally…..