Windows Of Blessings

It's been a while since we had a "Women's Event" at church, but I spent the morning enjoying a nice meal with friends, good conversation and preparing needed household items for some needy families. Be sure to check out the Re-Nesting Project, founded by my friend Noel (you can "like" them on Facebook to hear updates). It is an awesome project that furnishes and decorates homes of people moving out of homelessness. They have been up and running for just over a year and have already done AMAZING things!!

I agreed to decorate one of the tables several weeks ago, but as the time got closer, I found myself overwhelmed with other things and little time to pull things together. Somehow I missed the instructions to decorate in a fall theme,

so instead I did my own "take" on the theme for the day---Windows of Blessings.

I decided upon a white color scheme, accented by natural elements and symbols of my own blessings. While I longed for some new white plates like the ones pictured here or even here, I just couldn't justify the cost for something I would use so infrequently. Since our food for the day was going to be served on clear plastic plates anyway, I came up with a really low-cost solution that turned out pretty cute. I picked up a pack of solid white dinner plates and dessert plates at Wal-Mart ($.94 a pack = $1.98) and set to work with a silver paint pen and ultra-fine line Sharpie. I lined the edges with the silver paint and then wrote the featured scripture, Malachi 3:10, around the edges. I repeated the silver trim on the dessert plates, and wrote the word "blessings" around the edges.

I had planned to make some new linen place mats, but instead settled for just cutting them out with pinking shears (I can sew them together later for my own use).

Dollar Tree had these great white ceramic pumpkins---they had kind of a bluish tint to them, so I wiped a little bit of rust-colored acrylic paint on them before writing the word "Blessings" on each one.

The dollar bins at Michael's yielded some natural colored journals and pretty white pencils with a little bling on the end, so I used my paper stash to cover them as a favor for each person.

I used my collection of apothecary jars to showcase a few of my personal blessings. I included some pictures of my family (copied in B/W on my scanner), a rolled up piece of music from a hymnal, a bird's nest and feather, a glass cross, a poetry book, and lots of things from nature (acorns, magnolia cones, pine cones, leaves, etc.)

I finished by scattering a few tulle flowers I made several months ago for a shower and some linen circles. Again, I'd planned to sew these linen pieces together to make flowers, but that never happened, so I just scatter them about.

I was pleased with the end result and felt like it portrayed a sense of calm and peace that many of us need in our busy lives. I hope that my guests enjoyed it as well.