Southwestern Friendsgiving & DIY Place Cards
We now have a yearly tradition to spend Thanksgiving with all of our closest LA friends. Since we all have family in other states, its expensive to pay for two plane tickets home for Thanksgiving and then Christmas, so we all chip in on cooking a dish and we make our own Thanksgiving dinner! This year we were fortunate enough to all have the long weekend off of work and friends that flew in from out of town. So we traveled early Wednesday morning out to our friend's family house in Tucson where we got to spend 4 full days chilling at the pool, BBQing, drinking, and playing a lot of this Nerf gun game Trouble In Terrorist Town (that I would highly recommend with a large group of people, a big empty house, and a lot of tequila shots).
Below you will find the DIY for the cute Canvas Banner Place Cards that I made for our Thanksgiving dinner table. I also included a few photos of our southwestern-inspired tablescape. Check it out!
DIY Canvas Banner Place Cards
Step 1: Cut a piece of canvas to the sizing shown above.
Step 2: Fold in about a 1/4" of fabric on every side to create a finished edge. Hot glue into place.
Step 3: Fold over the final edge of the canvas over your wooden dowel and glue.
Step 4: Cut your wooden dowel down to be just a little bit larger than your canvas banner. I used a small hand saw and made mine about 5.25" long.
Step 5: Cut a small piece of pom pom trim and hot glue to the back of your canvas banner so the pom poms are visible from the front.
Step 6: Cut a piece of yarn and tie both sides to your wooden dowel. Leave enough slack in the yarn so that the string will make a triangle shape once hung. See photo above!
Step 7: Cut out initial letters from your felt. Mine are about 1.25" in height. Hot glue to the front of your canvas banner.
Tip: They can even be used after Thanksgiving as Christmas ornaments on your tree!
Since we were spending Thanksgiving in Arizona, where it was 90 degrees and the middle of the desert, I wanted to take the opportunity to stray away from the standard pumpkin/pine cone/turkey decor that you see on most every Thanksgiving table. I used a mix of purple, amber, and turquoise glassware, a simple white china plate, and *cough* disposable gold flatware *cough* (This set was $5 for 60 pieces at Target!! And it looks like real metal flatware in photos. So I'm all about going disposable if you want to save money and time. Less time doing dishes means more time playing Prosecco Pong). My friends were drinking by dinner time anyways, so I don't think anyone really minded!
For linens, I draped a folded serape blanket as the table runner in a corresponding color to the glassware. I added byzantine gold napkins to try and keep a somewhat natural thanksgiving look. And I topped it off with the homemade Canvas Banner name cards!
After the table was set and my thanksgiving dish was in the oven (I made roasted Brussels Spouts with bacon, a crowd favorite!) I was able to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, drink a Mimosa, and assume my spot where I spent the remainder of our holiday weekend -- floating on this pizza float:
I couldn't have asked for a better Friendsgiving weekend surrounded by an amazing group of friends. But now it's back to reality as we drive back to Los Angeles on Interstate 10 with every other human being in the world. But Christmas is just a few weeks away and I cannot be any more excited to tackle my LA Christmas Bucket List and start shopping for my family & friends.
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and cheers to the start of the Holiday season!
Rachael