Thanksgiving Decorations

With Thanksgiving cushioned between Halloween and Christmas it seems like Thanksgiving usually takes a back seat in terms of decorations. Since I like to decorate for different Holidays, I usually try to get a couple of things up for Thanksgiving.

This year I made a garland for the mantle. It took a little bit of time to do, but it was free, and I love how it turned out.

This is how I made it:

First I went and got some free clip-art images of leaves from Microsoft:

I put them into a Word document, adjusted them so they were all about the same size, and printed them on cardstock for my template. Then I gathered up some paper and used my template to cut out 10 leaves.

I then went to the Lost Type website and downloaded the font "Tommaso". If you don't know how to download a font - this is how it's done (at least on a PC like mine). Find a free font that you like (one of my other favorite font websites is UrbanFonts.com), download it, unzip the file, go to the control panel and open the "Fonts" folder. In the "Fonts" folder click file, then "Install New Font". A box will pop up, find the unzipped folder of your downloaded font, select the fonts to install, click "install", and viola! You have a new font. :) (Hope that makes sense - it's really very easy!)

Getting back to the garland - after I downloaded the font, I printed out the words "Give Thanks", cut them out, and glued them to some background paper.

I laid out everything I had and got everything in the order I wanted it to be in. Then I found some rafia I had and tied a few of the strings together. To attach the letters I just cut slits in the paper, for the leaves I just punched holes. I wish I would have done slits for the leaves also. Since the rafia is so thin, the leaves just twist to the side, so I had to tape them to the rafia - I wouldn't have had to do this if I had just done the slits, but oh well, now I know!

And there you have it:

How do you decorate for Thanksgiving, if at all?

- Lois