My Post-Thanksgiving Essay About My Thanksgiving (in case you happen to be a teacher!)

My poor mother-in-law!  She's always so patient with me and my decorating impulses which, despite my best efforts at restraint, I can never seem to keep from imposing on her!  She let me build a sofa table for her.  She lets me store my big Pottery Barn-esque sectional sofa in her living room.  She let me organize her laundry room cabinets!  She even let me re-formulate the third bedroom!

This Thanksgiving, all I had to do was make the green bean casserole.  So I offered to decorate the tables for her Thanksgiving dinner for 18.  I think I was probably being more selfish and impulsive than helpful. 

Orange plastic table cloths and four little turkey votive holders are usually enough for Ruth -- her joy comes from having so many guests that she has to rent tables and chairs!  She would be sorely disappointed if she had enough seating on hand for everyone without a trip to the party rental store!

So Ruth graciously agreed to let me decorate the tables.  Oh joy!  Like a kid in a candy store, I took a box and went around Taylor and gathered free stuff to decorate with:  table cloths (which, in retrospect, I wish I'd taken the time to iron), candles, a wooden bowl, a silver compote, a wooden box.  Next I headed outside.  I gathered pecans from under the tree down the street until I felt guilty for stealing from the squirrels.  I gathered pine cones from the back yard.  I gathered acorns from beneath another tree (again feeling squirrel guilt!).  Lastly, I clipped branches of gorgeous autumn-colored leaves from Ruth's Bradford pear trees -- complete with little, tiny, immature ornamental pears the size of pearl onions!

Here's what I came up with:

And here's a rare photo of Mark and I.  Usually I'm behind the camera!