Friendsgiving celebration !

Recently a group of  friends and I got together for a Friendsgiving celebration! We travelled for two hours to stay in a beautiful old homestead. I had the job of decorating the table. I gathered some greenery from the local area and some beautiful native flowers and got to work.

I laid some long greenery along the centre of the table.

I then added glass jars wrapped in twine in and around the centre greenery. I then placed different types of flowers into each jar.

I then set about creating my place settings.

I laid a fun napkin on the plate then added a sprig of wattle over the top.

I then created a place setting using powerpoint and printed them off onto some pink pattern paper from the Heidi Swapp Emerson collection. 

I cut them out with my circle cutter , punched a hole and threaded through some twine!

I purchased some bottles of honey from a local supplier as special gift for each friend. I  created a sweet note to attach to  the bottle. 

I printed them onto some Bazzill cardstock, trimmed them into a tag shape and then used some American Crafts  Moxy Glitter and a strip of double sided adhesive to add a shiny glittery bottom edge to my tag. I then tied the tag to the honey bottle with some twine.

I trimmed some more pattern paper from the Emerson Lane collection into circles and adhered to the top of the bottle lid for a cohesive look.

Once the table was set I added a few more touches.

My Heidi Swapp letterboard was setup on the beautiful vintage fireplace. I added the menu items of our meal onto the letterboard. 

I then set up another set of shelves for a special project I had in store for my friends. 

I used my Heidi Swapp Lightboxes- the original and the shelf lightbox and my Heidi Swapp wooden word which I had previously glittered in mint Marquee Love glitter to add some inspiration to the shelf.

I then set up my concertina mini albums- one lovingly made for each friend , some Emerson Lane washi and my Instax printer .

On the front cover I used the Heidi Swapp word Grateful that I cut with my silhouette. The mini album was made using one sheet of pattern paper from the Emerson Lane collection, trimmed in half then folded concertina style, and adhered together. I added stamping, sticker labels and stitching t embellish the cover.

Once all was set up I went about photographing everything for my memory keeping!

We had a delicious lunch and sat around laughing and chatting.

After lunch I gave my friends a little gratitude task to do. They each received their little album. 

They then had to go through their camera roll on their phone and find three photos of things or people they were grateful for. They spent quite a long time scrolling, one of my friends -Jan remarked it was so hard to choose because there were so many memories to be grateful for!

 

The photos and memories bought out lots of laughter! They all shared their photos and memories with each other.

I love the excitement that was shared during this time.

Next they sent me their chosen photos and I printed them with my Instax printer using the app on my phone.

I then shared how to add the photos and embellish their pages.

I handed out some of my American Crafts sticker books-  Heidi Swapp, Paige Evans and Vicki Boutin.

The girls spent a long time finding the perfect wording  and stickers for each photo. 

I loved seeing the determination and dedication on their faces.

I then asked them to write down their thoughts on why the photos and memories filled them with gratitude!

They really took their time in writing down their feelings!

I loved that once they were all finished they took the time to look at each others mini albums. 

Everyones album was filled with beautiful stories and memories. The albums were the perfect way to capture a little piece of gratitude. 

I loved sharing my passion of memory keeping and being able to find a way to share it with my friends. It really was a Friendsgiving to remember.