Christmas Tree Endeavor

This year was the year. We had finally made the decision... We were cutting down our Christmas tree. No more tree lots, no more pushy salesmen. We were going to hike up a mountain and chop ourselves a tree.

Well that's what we had imagined. We did make it to a tree farm and walked up and down the hillside but not one tree stood out to us as "the tree." Now I'm not a tree snob, but this was going to be in our living room for a few weeks and I wanted it to be special. So what did we do? We loaded up the truck, drove another 30 minutes to a tree ranch we had heard about.

We pulled up to a golden archway of twinkly lights and trees galore. Just then a reindeer train drove past filled with children of all ages pulling Santa in his sleigh. As we parked there were horse rides, a petting zoo, kettle corn booth and hot coco stands. I turned and looked at the kids faces as their jaws were on the floor.  By golly, this was the best tree lot ever!

And the tree lived happily ever after.

The End.

Mark your calendars! THEE Networking Blog Hop is this Sunday....

Glam Up Your Holiday Table Without Breaking the Bank

Have you ever taken the plunge and actually hosted Thanksgiving dinner?

A few years ago I ventured out of my comfort zone and cooked our little family of four a Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings. All was eatable except the gravy. I'm not quite sure what happened there, but the facial expressions of our kids are burned into my permanent memory. We all laughed it off and now it comes up now and then as one of those "remember when" stories. Priceless.

Today I've invited a special guest to share how she easily 

glammed up her holiday table without breaking the bank.

Hi everyone! My name is Sam, and I blog over at Atkinson Drive. I am SO excited that Laura invited me here! I have a beautiful Thanksgiving tablescape to share with you and I hope you love it! This a simple & affordable table setting, but there's a glamorous feeling to the whole thing. 

First, I took a roll of gold wrapping paper from Michael's for under $4.00 and cut it in half down the middle. I drew placemat shapes on the wrapping paper with a black sharpie. Another option would be to use brown kraft paper instead, then draw on it with metallic sharpies in either gold or silver. Instead of place cards, I decided to draw a monogram on each person's mug! If you would like to keep your mugs, simply draw the monogram onto the cup using a sharpie. It should wipe off pretty easily when your guests are gone, but shouldn't smudge during dinner. These are also really cute as a 'thanks for coming' gift for your guests! Goodwill always has great mugs on sale for something like $.50 each. Use the instructions found here to make the sharpie monogram permanent.

   

We just have plain drinking glasses...I know...we're SO boring! But I found this adorable craft tape at Michael's and just attached it to the bottom of each water glass to glam it up a bit. You could also use different tapes so people don't mix up their glasses.

   

Get ready for a barrage of pictures, because the centerpiece for this table is my FAVORITE part of the whole thing!!! It's super simple but oh-so gorgeous!

   

All I did was take a bunch of mason jars and place tealight candles in them then line the center of the table. For a few of the jars, I had floating tealights at varying heights just to add a bit of dimension to the look. As you can see, I also used some vintage & some new jars. There were even some stray candles not in jars.  

Of course you won't be eating dinner in complete darkness, but the candles look insanely amazing when all the lights are turned off.  

There's something about candles that just put me in a holiday mood! That's one thing I love about this table setting...there's nothing particularly "Thanksgiving" about it, so you could use it for Christmas also. I hope you enjoyed my Simple Glam Thanksgiving ideas, and hopefully I've helped inspire you!

Come check out my Thanksgiving Kids Table, too...

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Sam | Atkinson Drive