Last Minute Christmas Table & Placecards {tutorial}

We're going to have a full house for tonight's Christmas Eve dinner and mid-day yesterday I realized,

"What am I going to do with the table??"

Any of you that know me, know my favorite part of having guests over is the decorating!

I enlisted help from the boys before bed last night and when they woke up this morning {when it was still dark out...sigh}, Anton's first words to me were {in a whisper}

"Can we work on the napkins now, mom?" Sweet buddy. He loves my projects as much as I do.

So here are some pics to help inspire you to grab things around your house to make a cute table, and a quick little tutorial on the tags I used as place cards.

I promise, you can do this quick...in time for dinner tonight!

How cute are these? I found these printable gift tags at Jones Design Company but click here from my post about Kid's Money Jars for more cute printable tags.

Simply cut out the printable gift tags {or grab ones you have on hand}

I like the look of the hole reinforcers, and since that along with the hole punch are Anton's favorite part, he was assigned that task.

{and yes, he has a rudolf nose. He won't let me wash it off from this.}

Have you seen this chalking technique before?

It's one of my favorites for scrap booking, and really anything crafty that's paper related. It's basically just a smaller stamp pad that you run along the edge of paper to make it look more antiqued.

For this project, Ezekiel used the charcoal and brown colors together.

I then found a glue stick from the kid's art bin and rubbed it along the edges where Ezekiel just chalked, tapping the wet-glued sides into glitter {I loooove Martha Stewart's glitter}

This is what Laith was doing during our little project.

He was obviously only interested in going on an adventure.

And here is sweet little Imani...I can't wait 'till she's old enough to help me with my projects too!

Anton & Ezekiel did such a great job tying everything together

I like how this looks, but thought it was missing something...so I went outside and snipped a couple sprigs from the evergreen in our front yard. I love the finished project!

I hate my lack of photography skills...it looks so much prettier in person

Grab things from around your house to place on the table, I love using my grandfather's old books from the 1800's {which is why I'm using led tea lights from Costco rather than ones that might get wax all over}. Look for anything with texture, sparkle, or even some rust.

Or perhaps something with sentimental value, or history like some old family photos in silver frames.

Don't stick to just Christmas items...be creative!