ACORN NAPKIN RING TUTORIAL

Acorn Napkin Ring Tutorial:

One of the repeated themes on my Thanksgiving table will be acorns. To continue the theme I made napkin rings out of acorns collected on a hike.

The napkin rings are organic with a little glitz of gold, just the right combination for my table!  This project was fun and easy to do. And for no money, I now have beautiful napkin rings to use each fall!

StoneGable Acorn Napkin Rings

acorns, bottoms and tops

thin gauge wire

gold paint

hot glue

drill with slender bit

wire cutters

needle nose pliers

DUSTBUSTER (this project is a little messy)

SG: Tip Before you start this project, you will want to read this article about how to safely have insect free acorns to work with. Acorns can come with many unwelcomed  little critters inside. Thankfully they are easily taken care! Click HERE to read the article.

Gather acorns. (Or have your wonderful husband do it for you!) Bake acorns to get rid of any nasty pests or critters living in them according to the article referred to above.

Drill a small hole in your acorns through their equator.

Paint some acorns with gold paint. I use JoSonja's Artist's Gouache. It is a little thicker and dries beautifully. But any gold paint should do. I only put 1 coat on the acorns. I loved that some of the original color shows through here and there.

String acorns on 20 gauge wire. I had green wire, but if I were buying some just for this project I would look for gold toned.

I used 7 large acorns, and painted 2 gold for each napkin ring. Depending on the size of your acorns you might adjust the number of them for each napkin ring.

Make an acorn circle and twist wire ends to secure.  Using the needle nose pliers, bend the twisted ends back on the wire that goes through the acorns and tuck the twisted end back into the hole in the acorn.

Hot glue on a couple of little acorn hats... fun!!!

Pull a pretty napkin through and be THANKFUL for some unique and pretty new napkin rings!

Look for these napkin rings on StoneGable's Thanksgiving table, posted Wednesday!

StoneGable Thanksgiving Countdown

Only 5 days till the BIG EVENT! Hopefully you have been doing a little bit everyday and by now are well on your way to a less stressed holiday. I am so excited to share these tips with you today!!!!!!

Here at StoneGable we  serve Thanksgiving dinner between 3:00-4:00. Dinner can last  a couple of hours. We love the tarry at the table talking, telling stories and enjoying a cup of coffee after dinner.

We usually serve sweets as a dessert buffet later that evening. It gives us a chance to let our dinner settle. The dessert buffet is served around 7:00 .

Between dinner and dessert~ The table is cleared, the buffet is set and Thanksgiving dinner is totally cleaned up!

Clean-up is a big production but is also very easy and the burden does not fall on 1 person! We all pitch in and with a little music, wine and fun banter it is an enjoyable part of our Thanksgiving!

Here are my best tips for getting Thanksgiving dinner onto the table and cleaning it up.

THESE ARE MY BEST TIPS!

I usually cook Thanksgiving dinner and have a houseful every year. Many of my guest ask me "What can I do?" And when I am in the thick-of-dinner things I often find it hard to concentrate on what exactly I need them to do.

I now make 3x5 cards with all the jobs I need done  written on them. Write them out before Thanksgiving when you can sit down and think.

 When someone asks to help I hug them for their thoughtfulness and hand them a card. When the job is done the card goes into a "done" pile.

Examples: fill the water glasses with ice and water, light the candles, put the stuffing in the serving dish...

I ask 1 or 2 people to work with me in the kitchen, cleaning as we go so when it is time for the mea,l the kitchen is in good order! Thanks MOM and Lisa!

The 3x5 card technique works GREAT for clean up!!!!  Make a 3x5 card of everything you can think of that will need to be cleaned up.

Examples: Collect all flatware , Collect glasses collect all condiment dishes, collect all cloth napkins...

GIVE EVERYONE A 3x5 CARD AND A PLASTIC DISH PAN

 (All food leftover on plates gets scraped onto a sturdy paper plate and thrown away)

~the boyfriends and girlfriends you seperated at the table can clean up together... awwww!~

I have a dozen or so dish pans I bought at the dollar store.

I put a large towel over my washer and dryer in my laundry room just off the kitchen. I also put a folding utility table in there too. All the dish pans full of dirty tableware goes in the laundry room. At the utlity sink there is  a bottle of dish soap and I ask my helpers to fill their dish pan with hot sudsy water and leave them on the already prepared surfaces! The dishes are already cleaning themselves! If I didn't have my laundry room I would use my garage! And my kitchen stays relatively orderly. I LOVE THIS TIP!!!! IT BRINGS SANITY TO THANKSGIVING CLEAN-UP!

When it is time to wash the stemware, it is brought out of the laundry room and washed up. The dish pan is rinsed clean and a towel is put in the bottom of it. All clean stemware goes back into the pan to be dried and put away. Then the next pan of dirty dishes come out. Repeat until done.

We have a rule here, Cooks do not do the dishes!!!!  My husband and brother are great washers... aprons and all! Great modeling for the younger boys!!!!

By the time the dessert buffet is set up everyone is ready for something sweet. This is the time to bring out great paper plates and napkins. They just need to be tossed away. Clean up is so easy!!!!

I am setting my table tomorrow! It is a big job and my Mom and daughter are helping.

Monday I will talk about what to do with leftovers, what to make ahead and my Thanksgiving dinner timeline.

Yes, this post is FINALLY done!!!!! Have a Happy Pink Saturday.

I am participating in Pink Saturday, there has to be SOMETHING pink here!!!! Thanks Beverly, you are a wonderful hostess!!! Visit Pink Saturday and check out all the pink attitiude in Bloggland!