turkeys and pumpkins and printables, oh my!

i LOVE Thanksgiving. the minute Halloween was done last weekend, i tore down all the spiderwebs and creepy stuff and started getting psyched about having a homeful of people i love in a few weeks. my mom, father-in-law and sister-in-law will all be visiting with us for the holiday. it’s the first time we’ve ever done Thanksgiving with more than one guest (usually my mom). i love cooking all the fabulous dishes we usually only get once a year and always make too much food. so i’m happy that this year, i have a better chance of not having leftovers until April!

this year, we also have new-to-us family china that we inherited several months ago, when my father-in-law moved into a smaller place. the gold trim was hand painted on by Spy’s great aunts, so it is special and i wanted to create a great table to show it off for the first time in our home.

after a few hours of online searching and buying, my chargers, runner, napkins and napkin rings were all delivered over the course of this week. i dreaded going to Michael’s today to hunt down leaves and other baubles to fill in around my standard candles. probably the only worse fate on a Saturday in Atlanta is Ikea, which i did anyway. tackling both excursions would have sent me into the bottom of a bottle of bourbon that i’m not sure i could swim out of. so, i was really lucky to find enough sparkly things at Target that are technically Christmas, but still read fall and woodsy  . . . and Thanksgiving. score!

i did a trial run today (sans silver and glassware), pulling 2 white pumpkins off the front porch (that still probably need to be washed), dismantling an old wreath and adding a few mason jars with tealights to my standard orange pillars. i think the end result is a nice mix of dressy and casual with burlap contrasting sparkles and gold, real pumpkins contrasting glitter-covered pine cones and mason jars contrasting fancy china and white linens. y’all, i have literally never even attempted to put together a table like this, but i am positively in love with how it turned out and can’t wait to sit down to it in a few Thursdays!

to complete the look in the dining room, i loved the idea of doing some printables in a space where we usually rock this nice quote about home — also something i have never really done before. here’s a dirty little secret about what goes on around here: i create all my images in Keynote and save them out to jpegs. it’s a process, but it has worked thus far. it’s a fine solution for web images, but they’re not hi-res enough for great printing. and i cannot even think about doing the math to create files large enough to get converted to hi-res and not be the size of a postage stamp. i couldn’t find anything anyone else had created that i loved that was also downloadable at a decent size i could print at home and frame in a standard frame.

then, late one night, i remembered the Canva account i recently signed up for. life changing, y’all! seriously. super simple way to create print documents that look great without having to buy and learn any expensive software. there are templates for a bunch of different types of images/documents from Facebook headers to posters and business cards, with some ability to manipulate designs and create your own from scratch.  some matte photo paper and a couple  Ikea frames later and i have a fun display that included zero drama to create. you’re welcome to download them here.

i’m thankful that my holiday look has come together . . . now to start working on what we’ll eat and how we’ll spend our time together while everyone’s here! what are you doing to get ready for Thanksgiving?