Thanksgiving Table Settings

Quick Place Card

Sweet-gum-tree spurs bring the outdoors to your table.

Thanksgiving Table Settings

Feathered Friends

These handsome place-card gobblers add a burst of holiday cheer.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Paper Squirrels

Guests will go nuts over these cute critters. Squirrels perched atop logs filled with foil-wrapped chocolate chestnuts, hazelnuts, and walnuts make sweet seasonal tokens. Put one at each setting at the Thanksgiving table. You can write guests' names on the logs before assembling them so the favors can double as place cards.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Pinecone Turkey

This place-card companion might not take center stage, but it will still be a welcome addition to your table.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Pom-Pom Tom Decoration

The only turkey you won't want to gobble up this holiday? One of our comely yarn-and-felt creations. Perched on a mantel or arranged on a straw-covered tray on a sideboard, they are a fun, fanciful touch. You can also use them as place-card holders (glue name tags inside their beaks), and invite children to take their feathered friends home at the day's end.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Speckled Place Cards

Flecks of paint on paper foliage mimic the mottled appearance of real leaves

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Turkey Trivia Place Card

Stump guests with a little turkey trivia.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Festive Foliage

Large trivets in leafy shapes add seasonal style while protecting your dinner table from piping-hot plates.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Printed Linens

Fallen leaves are abundant at this time of year, and their graceful silhouettes and tawny colors make them a natural theme for seasonal linens and decorations you craft yourself.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Napkins

These three napkin folds are easy to create (but your guests will never know). For impressive results, start with clean, pressed linen or cotton napkins, and keep the iron hot.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Tabletop Collage

Display autumn leaves beneath a sheer tablecloth, and the dining room will look as brilliant as the maple in the front yard. Place leaves between paper towels or waxed paper inside a phone book for a week to dry and smooth them. If needed, use double-sided tape to attach foliage -- in any grouping -- to a standard white tablecloth. Then place a sheer cloth, such as organza, on top.

Thanksgiving Table Settings

In Full Feather

This modern table setting picks up the palette with chartreuse place mats on a bleached-oak table, contrasted with matte white plates and Venetian glass tumblers.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Glimmer and Shine

Blue is not traditionally associated with the season, but highlight it with small touches of gold, as in these spray painted miniature pumpkins and a place card written in gold ink, and the color can become a happy participant in holiday revels. A block-printed napkin and tablecloth and the marbleized plate add patterned richness, while a mix of mismatched contemporary glassware and classic flatware keep the feeling clean and modern.

Thanksgiving Table Settings

Wishbone Napkin Ring

To make "silver" napkin rings, save wishbones from roast chickens, wash and dry them thoroughly, and spray them with chrome paint. On each one, string silver cord from tip to tip; wrap it six times around the bone, and tie it off.

Thanksgiving Table Settings

Colors of the Season

For a splash of style, adorn your table with autumn's brightest accessories: vivid fall leaves. Simply clip sprays of young leaves from a tree in your yard (ours are from a maple). Arrange the clippings at each place setting, and top with transparent glass plates. Come dinnertime, you'll be basking in the oohs and aahs of your guests.

Thanksgiving Table Settings

Oak-Leaf Cornucopia

Aa napkin and a handwoven sparkling favor echo the cornucopia's shape, while more gilded leaves and acorns festoon the napkin and the place card. Sugared almonds and pine nuts fill the cornucopia favors.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

A Timeless Table

Elegance can be found in familiar places. Here, formal china is set out with homemade hollowware. Hot-glue a large bowl to a smaller one (or a plate to a teacup) to create pedestals from inexpensive tableware; use one for bread and others for roses (cut the stems short and insert into wet floral foam cut to fit the bowls). Handsomely folded cloth napkins fit in with the table's traditional feel. To make photo place cards, copy childhood photographs of family members in black-and-white or sepia; then glue the images to card stock, and trim with deckle-edged scissors.

Thanksgiving Table Settings

A Modern Table

This distinctive contemporary table begins with an emphasis on light and form. A homemade Ultrasuede table mat adds color and interest; it's cut with a rotary cutter just smaller than the table to create the illusion of a border. Sleek hurricanes filled with fallen leaves show off colors that contrast with the otherwise monochromatic palette. The clear glass of the goblets and hurricanes keeps the look clean. A leaf in the folds of a napkin and a handwritten place card -- a strip of paper inscribed with a white-gel pen -- welcome each guest to dinner.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Mayflower Kid's Table

A miniature Mayflower sets sail on a map tablecloth, while paper-boat place cards guide young guests to their seats.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Headdress Place Setting

A feather dresses up a simple twill-tape napkin wrap, which doubles as a headdress during -- and after -- the feast.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

A Whimsical Table

This table in fall hues -- orange-fringed paper napkins, golden drinks, and Bakelite utensils -- will hold kids' interest with style (but adults, too, might like a centerpiece of chocolate turkeys). Draw turkeys on a fringed paper tablecloth for coloring between courses; brown-paper goody bags tied with beaded-leather cord hold the crayons.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Harvest Napkin Ties

For pretty napkin ties that evoke the harvest season, attach store-bought acorns to satin ribbon.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Leaf Place Cards

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Thanksgiving Chocolate-Bar Place Card

Bring a touch of yesteryear to the holiday spread with this stately gobbler.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Basket-Weave Place Cards

Use swatches of caning to print designs for custom place cards.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Cornhusk Napkin Rings and Place Cards

Inspired by the early American craft tradition of making dolls from cornhusks, our cornhusk flowers -- mimicking apple blossoms -- are both elegant and simple to create.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Beaded Napkin Rings

Making custom napkin rings for any table setting is a cinch with colorful ribbon and beads.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Ribbon Napkin Rings

These braided ribbon napkin rings are simple to make.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

No-Stitch Cross-Stitch

You don't need to spend hours to re-create the designs of early American samplers. We used a paint pen to stitch designs onto glass, imprinting leafy motifs on large candleholders for a centerpiece and monograms on votive holders for favors.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Using Your Gourds

Although they are traditional fall-decorating fodder, these gourds manage to look surprisingly fresh -- more evocative of modernist ceramics than of paper pilgrim-hat place cards (not that there's anything wrong with those). Mixing painted bowls made from dried gourds with a pair of whole crook necks gives the autumnal standbys a life beyond the Thanksgiving table. Once you've arranged the gourds themselves, fill the bowls with natural, textured accents -- like nuts and leaves -- as well as a few shiny trimmings (such as the gold seed-pods shown here, available prepainted at craft stores) for even more color and contrast.

Thanksgiving Table Settings

Fall Centerpiece

A quick trip to the market yielded this fall centerpiece, an informal arrangement of kumquats, squashes, and a bell pepper in a ceramic compote. Use whatever orange fruits and vegetables you find, such as baby pumpkins, carrots, persimmons, and, of course, oranges.

Thanksgiving Table Settings

Cornhusk Votives

Wrapped in dried cornhusks, votives cast a soft glow and serve as a reminder that corn was part of the first Thanksgiving feast.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Pine Cone Candlesticks

These climbers include flowers made from Sabulosum cone scales, buds from the tamarack tree, and leaves, which are really single Norway spruce cone scales. The finished vine can be tightly coiled around a candlestick.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Putting Down Roots

Step aside, pumpkins -- here's an unexpected and inviting accent for the dinner table. We used daikon radishes and turnips, but any root vegetable will work. Using a knife, slice off enough of the leafy top to create a flat base. Insert black-headed pushpins to form eyes; for the mouth, cut a half-moon into the vegetable with a paring knife, and fill it in with a black marker. Arrange several in a shallow bowl, varying the heights and the shapes.

Thanksgiving Table Settings

Flocking Together

Highlights of dark candles and orange-patterned accent plates add surprising contrast to a formally set dining table.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Paper Turkeys

Getting these brilliantly feathered friends to the table requires pasting (but no basting) and some cutting and folding. For a gobbling-good centerpiece, set out two or three in the middle of your holiday table.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Mini Pumpkin Centerpiece

Give thanks with style. Here's a harvest of ideas for creating a festively dressed affair.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

A Harvest Table

Set a celebratory table with bold splashes of color from the garden or farmers' market; gourds, fruit, and nuts come in golds, yellows, oranges, and a range of browns and greens.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Fall Basket Centerpiece

The handwoven look of basket weave meets streamlined simplicity in a container made by wrapping a strip of caning around a glass cylinder.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Thanksgiving Grape Centerpiece

The jewel tones and cascading abundance of these arrangements are an ode to autumn.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Glowing Hurricane Glasses

Wrap hurricane glasses in layers of colorful tissue paper to glowing effect.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Gilded Pear Basket

These modest containers are at their prettiest when brimming with pleasing and rustic treats.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Harvest Centerpiece

A table arrangement of grains celebrates the bounty of fall.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Floral Pumpkin Centerpiece

A white-pumpkin shell becomes the vase for an arrangement of blooms in fall colors -- yellows, peaches, and shades of orange.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Apples and Nuts Basket

An extravaganza of autumn apples fills this double-handed basket.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Chrysanthemum Arrangements

Add a splash of fall color to your Thanksgiving table with an arrangement of cheerful mums.

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Thanksgiving Table Settings

Basket-Weave Candles

Transform basic pillar candles with strips of beeswax and a simple under-and-over weave.

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