And STILL Two Things: Recipe Contest and FREE & EASY Placemat Idea

1st thing: Red Alert: This is the last day to enter our "All Things Asparagus Contest." Take just a few minutes to send us your favorite recipe featuring asparagus and you'll be eligible to win a $99 package of the best recipe organizer ever created. Cook'n Recipe Organizer Version 10 can be yours! Read Monday's post for all the features this product has--it's impressive. We'll announce the winners on Monday, so get your recipe to us.

2nd thing: Here's an idea for making some fun placemats, for FREE. Decor, upholstery, and furniture stores have upholstery sample books they regularly get rid of. Sometimes they'll charge a small fee, but usually they'll give them away for FREE.

While these books vary in size, often times the books we've gotten contain samples the size of a typical placemat. The neat thing about them is that they're arranged in color families--all the blues are together, all the reds are together, all the greens are together, and so on. Although the prints aren't the same, the fact that you have color families is enough of a unifier to make for a darling set of placemats.

We find the color families we like and want to work with and cut the fabrics out as close to the spine of the book as possible. Then we just fold the cut side under and stitch it down. The other three sides are already stitched! And voila--we now have FREE and really pretty placemats. And the beauty of this is, any beginning sewer in the family can help make them.

While you don't want to put these in the washing machine, they do wipe clean easily. However, the other beauty of upholstery placemats is, because they are free, it's no big deal if they get stained beyond help--just toss them and get another sample book for making more placemats!

As always, we invite your input: Do YOU have ideas for affordably adding to your table linens--placemats, runners, napkins, tablecloths? Please be sure to comment if you do--we love hearing from you. And in closing, we hope you will send us your favorite asparagus recipe, find an upholstery book and make some darling FREE placemats, and have a great weekend. Until Monday then, here's to family dinner made easy!

And STILL Two Things: Recipe Contest and FREE & EASY Placemat Idea