Burlap and Black

I am not much of a “Black Friday” shopper. I hate crowds and there is nothing I want to buy bad enough that could tempt me to get out of bed at some crazy early morning hour to go shopping. Nothing! Even if it was were Free. And that is a powerful word “free” and I kindly say “no thanks, I’ll sit this one out”. Somehow I think there will be bargains enough all through the month of December to satisfy my holiday shopping. With that said, I did stop by the Goodwill this morning (at the civilized hour of 10:00am) after I went to the post office. :) It was a great time to shop. Almost no one was there. They were all out standing in line at Walmart, Target, and Best Buy!

I found a few things that I picked up for cheapness. One of which was this set of 5 black square picture frames for only $4.99. And they already had the picture wire attached on the backs for immediate hanging. I decided to do something with some of my leftover burlap. So I removed the glass inserts and stretched a piced of burlap that I cut out over the piece of foam board I found in the middle of the frame. Then I simply used my stamps and stencils along with some black craft paint and made some mini pictures with them.

I created 3 of them and will wait to do the last two until the new stencils I ordered off of Etsy arrive. I can’t wait to get them and show you the last two after I finish them. So stayed tuned!

Our Thanksgiving Table

Can you smell the turkey roasting in the oven yet?

Here is my Thanksgiving centerpiece made from my white Goodwill bowl and the FREE gift from American Greetings of a burlap bag with decorator balls.

And here are my cordial glasses tea lights. Yes another Goodwill find and they were only .99 cents each. I placed a tea light in each one and set one at each place setting.

Love the Autumn Leaves pattern.

Oh and did you notice my Pottery Barn Napkin Rings???? I love them!

I found the dishes at Pier One Imports a couple of years ago.

Here is a close up of my “almost” free centerpiece.

The table is set and the only thing missing is the turkey!

I wish you and your family a very HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Cordial Glasses And Tea Lights

I swear my blog is starting to turn into the “Goodwill Rehab” blog! Yes I found these delightful cordial glasses at the Goodwill last week. Perfect for this time of year. I decided to add little tea light candles to each one and I am going to set one at each place setting at our Thanksgiving table.

I only paid .99 cents for each little glass.

Love the leaves and how perfect they are for this time of year. They have a gold rim around the top that the camera is not catching. Too cute!!

Thanksgiving Table Centerpiece And It is Almost FREE!

I stumbled on a great idea for a centerpiece for our Thanksgiving table today. And I usually don’t worry too much about a centerpiece. Usually I just light some candles but today I found a great centerpiece and it was almost for FREE! (and Free is good!) This also gives me a chance to show you another one of my Goodwill Finds. This time I was shopping in High Point, NC and saw a Goodwill store that I had never been in. It was very small and not much to pick from. It was nothing like the one closer to my home. But, I found a beautiful white bowl and it looked like it had a French fleur de lis motif. $1.99 is all I paid for it and I love it. That was a few weeks ago and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it until today.

American Greetings is having a FREE gift with the purchase of four cards. They are giving away a burlap/jute bag that is tied off with raffia and it is filled with an assortment of decorator balls! All of them are “earthy”. One is a ball covered with jute twine, a few look liked dried seed pods and some have a grapevine look to them. All of them are fabulous!

I wanted my centerpiece to look full and like the balls were spilling out of the bowl but it was a bit big and all of the balls were barely coming to the top. I needed more “spillage”.

So I made some loosely formed balls out of aluminum foil and put them in the bottom of the bowl and then added my “pretty” balls on top. Problem solved.

I hope American Greetings is having this same offer all around the country. I needed cards anyway and was so happy to get a “freebie” too! I found mine at my local Harris Teeter grocery store but I would bet you could find this offer anywhere that sells American Greetings Cards. Good Luck! And I hope you find them!

No Shortage of Trays

There seems to be no shortage of trays at the Goodwill. Every time I hit the Goodwill it seems I find another tray just begging me to take it home. I can’t leave them there when the prices range from$1.99 and $3.99. I don’t care how ugly they are just so long as they are sturdy and in good condition. These are two of my my latest finds.

The tray with all the fruit on it is nice and big and has a nice weight to it. It was well made. I paid $3.99 for it. The snowman tray…very cheap and I had to Gorilla Glue some of the pieces that were coming apart but I only paid $1.99 for it . Both were grubby dirty so I washed them up and dried them thoroughly before I took them out to the backyard where I gave them each a couple of coats of Rust-o-leum Black Spray Paint.

After the paint was dry I picked out my paper to decoupage to the bottom of the trays. I have a lot of beautiful sheets of scrapbooking paper but I just can’t seem to get away from the black and white harlequin pattern! I just love how this paper looks on everything I decoupage it to! The big tray was going to require an odd size of paper and one sheet was not going to be enough. So I decided to cut each of 2 sheets in half and then I ended up using 3 of those sheets.

I applied Mod Podge to the bottom of the tray with a foam brush and then one at a time, I brushed the back of each sheet of paper as I was working with it and applied it to the tray. I was having a tough time with the third sheet as I was decoupaging it to the tray. I had way too many air bubbles that I just couldn’t seem to get out so I decided to scrape it all out and re-do the third panel. That is what the mess in the photo below is. Things don’t always go as smoothly as they should!

Matching up the papers was not going to be easy to do so I simply left some space in between so that each sheet looked like it had a black border. And here they are almost dry.

And now after a full day of spray painting and decoupaging I am ready to sit down and relax. Cheers!

A Little Bit of Silver

I found this beautiful and almost contemporary looking silver and glass pitcher at the Goodwill. And I only paid $2.99 for it! I have to admit that it was tarnished and it had some dried white stuff on the bottom of the pitcher but there were no chips in it and I just couldn’t leave it there!

When I got it home the first thing I did was wash it and I used my kid’s favorite science experiment…vinegar and baking soda to bubble up the white stuff stuck on the bottom. Then it took me about 5 minutes of elbow grease and some silver polish to get the tarnish off the handle and the top of the rim and spout. It shined up beautifully!

I come across silver bowls and candy dishes all the time at the Goodwill. And I have some silver pieces but truthfully they are still in same box the movers packed them into from our last move and they are somewhere up in the storage room. Someday I will bring them out and shine them up when I decide where I might want to put them. But, I have no intentions of growing a silver collection unless I come across pieces that I know we will use. And I do believe we will use this pitcher. Pitcher of iced tea or orange juice on the weekends? A pitcher of Cosmo’s or Pomegranate Martinis perhaps? Yes please!

(See that little lamp next to my pitcher? I picked that up a few weeks ago for $6.00 at a consignment store.) Have a Happy Wednesday!

Sunflowers Wrapped in Burlap

One of my favorite flowers especially this time of year is Sunflowers. You can still get them fairly easily and inexpensively and they bring a little bit of summer back into the Fall. I absolutely love this photo from BEADBOARD UPCOUNTRY where the sunflowers are wrapped in burlap and tied off with a big yellow ribbon.

If you are lucky enough to live near Brenham Texas you can visit the Beadboard Upcountry shop yourself. If you are like me and you don’t live anywhere near Texas, you can enjoy it right on your laptop! It is a fun blog to visit and she blogs about all kinds of things but every now and then you can get a peek at what is in her shop.

Be quick. The amount of time left to enjoy sunflowers is running out. It is just a matter of days before the Poinsettias take over!