Pennant Banner for Thanksgiving

 Well, it's been an interesting week to say the least.  When our home was built there was defective moulding installed around the outside of our windows.  The contractors came to replace it all today.  Even though our house is only 6 years old, there was a lot of damage and even some wood rot around a couple of the windows.  They surprised me today with how much "my portion" of the repairs would cost.  Yikes!  They also let me know that they wouldn't be painting said repair work, so my next post may include photos of me on a ladder painting the house (the visualization makes me laugh).

The best part is that as they were repairing the outside of the kitchen windows, the pounding was forceful enough to knock most of the grout out of the tile backsplash!  Fantastic!  So, guess what I'll be teaching myself to do this winter?  (Do you see how determined I am to turned this into a positive?)

Right now I'm trying to ignore the hammering, take deep breaths and 

"KEEP CALM AND BLOG ON".  (My new favorite saying)

Better late than never, I finally got around to decorating the mantel for Thanksgiving.

I know, there's an owl up there!  I couldn't help myself.
 
Owls are all the rage right now (I guess) and when I got him a few weeks ago at the GW ($.99), I was still trying to decide if owls were creepy or cute.  This guy is cute and he really, really wants to be a turkey.  Or, maybe he's feeling lucky that he's not a turkey!

My 'give thanks' letters started out black but they didn't show against the dark mirror, so I gave them a shot of antique white. And of course there had to be at least one pretty white pumpkin.

This banner was very, very simple to make.  I felt like this pennant style banner was a little more rustic than my normal decorating style, so I didn't want to spend anything on this one in case I just didn't like it.  It turned out a lot less rustic than I'd imagined!
I cut the pennants from brown paper grocery bags, used a hole punch on them and cut the letters on my Cricut using leftover construction paper.  (The problem I encountered with grocery bags? You can see the grocery store logo in the reflection of the mirror on my mantel, oops.)

I also encountered an issue with my Cricut mat.  It's losing it's "sticky" and the paper kept sliding around.  I know you can buy replacements, but that doesn't seem very earth friendly.  Instead, I taped off the edges and gave it a few shots of spray adhesive.  It works great!  I'm not going to lie and tell you that spray adhesive IS earth friendly, but I think I can justify a few squirts of VOC over loading up the landfill.  But that's another post entirely.  Anyway....

I Mod Podged the letters lightly and used twine to string them up.  I added as many rustic elements as I could dig up around the house and here it is!

The banner was cute and free... the best kind, right?!  I can see myself making these with fabric and ribbon or different shapes of paper for lots of occasions!  (Look out, I'm clearly feeling crafty today!) Of course one of the boys just asked me whose birthday it is.  Hmmmm....

Do the grocery store logos drive you crazy?  Is it worth pulling the banner down and painting over, or covering up in some way?  I'd love your thoughts!


 

I linked my banner up here: