From our Buy Owner offices to the dining rooms of your homes throughout the nation, Happy Thanksgiving!
Posts tagged thanksgiving
Thanksgiving Decorating Tips
Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and though we’ve previously discussed how home sellers should keep holiday decorations to a minimum, there is nothing wrong with adding fall flare to your home or with adding warmth and coziness to your layout.
Wow your dinner guests with homemade or purchased decorations that not only show off the vibrant colors of fall, but that also celebrate the coming together of friends and the beginning of our founded nation. In the hype of winter holidays to come, Thanksgiving décor is sometimes forgotten, but it just as lovely and important as any other holiday.
To decorate for your Thanksgiving, try to incorporate some of these ideas:
• Show off some cornucopias! Place a few medium-sized examples around the home, or just display one large example as your table’s centerpiece. Fill this treasure with real or fake fall leaves, acorns, pine cones and twigs, or fill it with brightly colored flowers, fruits or vegetables! As a goody bag for your guests to take home, Disney’s FamilyFun.com suggests filling sugar cones with multi-colored hard candies and writing each person’s name on a cone with cake icing!
• Dedicate a table or a corner of the room for pumpkins and an array of uniquely shaped and colored squash and gourds! These can be found in your local grocery store, or you could make a day out of choosing some at a local pumpkin farm. You could even serve the squash as part of the meal! One popular fall recipe includes cutting an acorn squash in half, scooping out the seeds, placing some butter and brown sugar in the middle, and cooking the squash in the microwave for 10 minutes.
• To promote green living to your family and friends, host a green Thanksgiving, using only eco-friendly decorations! Our Green Thanksgiving blog provides you with an abundance of options, which include serving soup in hollowed-out baby pumpkins or adding an autumn scent with candles made out of recyclable goods! You can read all kinds of eco-friendly decorating ideas.
• Remember the pilgrims and Indians that made this day possible? Decorate with wheat stalks or cornstalks, to celebrate the harvest. Hang Thanksgiving stickies on your windows that display a pilgrim and Indian setting. Fill a vase with colorful feathers. Surprise your guests with homemade Indian and pilgrim hats! For instructions on how to make these hats, visit ziggityzoom.com. You could even tell everyone to dress up in costumes, or as the host, dress up alone!
• No matter what side dishes you decide to serve, every Thanksgiving meal has one thing in mind: turkey. Celebrate this common element by displaying stuffed animal turkeys, window stickies with turkeys, or just drawings of turkeys. One renowned way of creating an artistic, personal turkey is to trace your hand, draw the face in your thumb, and color your fingers different colors for the feathers.
Thanksgiving decorations should be quick to set up and quick to take down. After the last guest finishes his or her slice of pumpkin pie and heads out the door, you could quickly toss the hollow pumpkins and homemade turkey drawings, take down the window stickies, fold up the Indian costume and store away the cornucopia for next year. Keep things simple!
A Green Thanksgiving
As part of our “Going Green during the Holidays” series, the next stop on our green holiday tour is Thanksgiving. November is a great time of year to collect golden leaves, pretty pumpkins and other fall favorites that can spruce up your home and keep the environment healthy, as well! And with tasty thoughts of gourmet Thanksgiving dinners flooding your mind, you can always decorate your home with edible fresh fruits and veggies, too.
- Centerpieces draw your guests’ attention to the table before you even lay out the turkey and all its trimmings! One of the most festive decorations is a wicker cornucopia, which can be reused year after year. Go the grocery store or your local farmer’s market and pick out your favorite fruits and veggies. Try to find complementary autumn colors like yellows, reds, oranges and browns. Arrange the fruits and vegetables inside the cornucopia and feel free to let a few of them spill out onto the table. The overflowing cornucopia is sure to make your guests hungry! And once your celebration is over, you can use the fruits and veggies and cook up yummy meals with all those leftovers.
- Other natural arrangements can include hemp napkin holders, fresh cut flowers, grapevine garlands, leaf garlands, dried fruit accents and cinnamon stick accents. Hemp napkin holders are very environment-friendly and boast an earthy tone, perfect for Thanksgiving decorations. Grapevine and leaf garlands look amazing on breakfast bars, plant shelves, mantels and pass-thru window sills! They create a nature-inspired look. Tuck dried fruit or cinnamon sticks into napkins for added flair. Guests can then use them to flavor hot apple cider or green tea!
- Candles set the mood with soft lighting and pure scents. Caterpillars Candles strives to be a zero-waste company and solely use recyclable materials to make their candles. Choose from a lovely array of votives, tea lights, jar candles and tins! If the soothing scents are what you are after, you could also look for pure essential oil fragrances at a Whole Foods store.
- What should you do with all those fallen leaves in your backyard? Raking them all up and building a compost pile is one “green” option. However, fallen leaves could serve as coasters to protect your wooden furniture from rings and stains! The leaves of oak trees boast a leather-like feel and appearance, making them very durable and ideal as natural coasters.
- Serving soup before dinner? Instead of using plastic/paper bowls, why not use baby pumpkins? Hollow out each individual pumpkin and serve up some hot soup to your guests. They will truly appreciate the festive dishware. You could also take the same idea to another level. Large, hollowed-out pumpkins make fantastic vases! Filling the empty pumpkin with long-stemmed golden flowers creates an ideal piece for your fall decor.
If your creative genius was enhanced by these green decorating tips, just wait until winter arrives! Going Green during the Holidays will return in one month, giving you decorating advice for a Green Winter!