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!