For Monday’s challenge, I decided to put myself on a budget.

You ready to see the outrageous leash I gave myself?

Are you???

My budget was. . . . . .  $0.00

That’s right! Zero dollars and zero cents. Free. Gratis. No monies.

The pink corduroy, lace, pumpkin goblets, real silverware, and cloth napkins were all pulled from Mom’s stash. Since the china is currently being kept at her house too, I guess you could throw that on the list too. {Thanks Mom!!}

What didn’t I borrow from Mom?? The yellow IKEA tree.

Hanging on that punchy tree are the only things I actually made for my tablescape {is that even a word?!}, my thankful leaves.

Those had to have cost money, right?! NOPE!!

They’re made from paper bags.

Yup. Simple, free, paper bags that brought groceries home from the grocery store.

The front side of our bags was printed with an advertisement but the back was completely blank – inside & out.

I started by cutting out the back side of the back. It’s just about the size of 2 ~ 8.5×11 sheets of paper laid out side-by-side {or about 8.5×22″}.

Cut out 2 ~ 8.5×11″ pieces of paper bag. In your favorite word processing program, create your text. Print it out on your pieces of paper bag.

Here’s mine, if you want to use it.

Then I ran the sheets through the corrugater/krimper thing {blue plastic thing at the top of the pic}.

Using a real leaf for inspiration, I cut out leaves.

This was honestly was the most difficult part for me. It took a lot of finessing for me to get something that remotely looked like a leaf and not a weird blob. I could have fit more leaves per paper bag page if I had traced a template. But I’m lazy. And that would have added a whole extra step or few {find a template, print & cut it out, trace}.

One time through the krimper didn’t make them as wavy as I’d have liked, so I ran the individual leaves through a second time after I cut them out.

Sidebar: I did the place cards the same exact way!

Punch holes in the stem end. Thread your favorite ribbon through. Tie.

All done!!

Have a HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!