After I divulged how much I suck at Halloween and shared my lazy approach to fall decorating, I just knew I couldn’t let Thanksgiving pass by without any effort on my part. I mean, “I Suck at Thanksgiving” would have been a little too lazy, right?
To be fair… I suck at Thanksgiving.
Our first Thanksgiving together, I was filled with delusions of domestic prowess. I was going to make the perfect Thanksgiving dinner from scratch – turkey, stuffing, sides, and a homemade pecan pie. In fact, we were going to be hosting Thanksgiving dinner for another couple we knew. My naïveté ambition knew no bounds.
Well. The turkey was in the oven, the pie was in the works, and the phone rang… Our friends weren’t coming due to a crazy house fire (thankfully, everyone was fine). So it would just be the two of us sitting down to eat a huge turkey, mountains of food, and a whole homemade pecan pie.
But that stupid pie would not set. Halves of overpriced pecans floated tauntingly on the surface of a gooey center that just refused to solidify. I may have cried, but I pressed on.
There was still the turkey – beautiful, golden brown – and it smelled divine. I even made gravy. Successfully.
We sat down to eat, carving slices off the turkey as we went.
The slices slowly became more and more pink the deeper we carved.
Worried, we hacked further into the beast and discovered that the center was completely raw, despite the meat thermometer promising otherwise when the turkey was initially pronounced “done”.
Then came the nausea…
Hours later, tired, discouraged, still a little queasy, yet extremely hungry, we made our way to a nearby steakhouse for our belated Thanksgiving dinner.
And ever since, our Thanksgiving tradition has been to treat ourselves to a really nice meal at a favorite restaurant and be thankful that we don’t have food poisoning.
So please enjoy this Thanksgiving table setting I pulled together, but I just have to be frank: no turkey or cranberry sauce will be consumed at the place-settings you see. Instead, they’ll just be awkwardly set for days as if four people are about to sit down and enjoy a well-cooked family meal. It’s called staging, right? Martha Stewart would be proud.
I used an old pale aqua paisley duvet cover as a tablecloth over it I layered a colorful table runner that I sewed from a thrifted pillowcase. Bed linens = table linens in my book.
The colors in the fabrics just so happened to tie in perfectly with my thrift-store plates and Target-clearance mercury glass candlesticks. That is to say: I definitely tend to shop within a certain color palette. I wanted to keep it from being *too* pastel though, so I brought it some orange with my crafty pumpkins…
Did you see that? I gold-leafed the stems of those cheapo faux gourds! Gilding the pumpkin. Me and gold leaf are best friends for life now. Nothing is safe. Nothing is sacred…
Also, glitter. I got some glitter going up in this party:
This is a very detailed process, so pay close attention, and – you may want to take notes:
Step 1: Open your front door.
Step 2: Note pile of leaves amassed in your front flower bed.
Step 3: Speculate that responsible home-owners probably don’t let so many leaves pile up everywhere.
Step 4: Pick up a few of said leaves. Extra credit: choose based on most appealing shapes and sizes.
Step 5: Dig out craft supplies – glue and that huge boxed set of Martha Stewart glitter you never want to use because it’s too pretty, and how many things can you glitter before it’s considered a health-hazard? But seriously, you have like 10 pounds of glitter just sitting around, so just use some already!
Step 6: Brush glue onto top of each leaf. (You will also need a paintbrush for this step. I’m sorry I forgot to mention this in step 5.)
Step 7: Cover it in glitter. All the glitter. When you think there’s enough glitter, ADD MORE GLITTER.
Congratulations.
You just took a leaf and put glitter on it. You should host a show on HGTV.
You guys, it was like I was on crafting crack yesterday. See those napkins? Yep, I made those too. A little fabric, a little heat-n-bond, a little quality time with an ironing board and my friends from the Fringe Division…
In just a few short hours I feel like I did penance for all my past craft-neglect AND squirreled some crafting bonus points away for the future.
Oh, it’s not even over yet.
I put some dead leaves on a string.
I love it.
Thanksgiving = a holiday where you can go pick dead stuff up out of your yard and call it decorations. Viva la Thanksgiving!
So who wants to come over for Thanksgiving dinner? We’ll admire my pretty table, sip a fall cocktail, and then head out to eat 😉
Pinky-swear-promise that if you get food poisoning, it won’t be my fault.
LOL, this cracked me up and so would be something that would happen to me. I almost gave my office food poisoning once with raw chicken crap. Yuck!
I'm thankful that I don't have to invite my husband's family to Thanksgiving dinner and also hope they don't read your blog and see my comment LOL.
Love the table setting though! 😉
Haha, here's hoping they're not readers 😉 I'm super happy with our eat-out-at-a-fancy-restaurant arrangement.
It just cracks me up that our first Thanksgiving was such a textbook early-marriage-disaster. It was like a terrible Hallmark holiday movie plot. But I'm willing to own up to it for the sake of entertainment 🙂
Oh my goodness your crafty-ness is out of this world girl! This post makes me smile wide and giggle from your easy glitter-rific decorations haha. Way to go on getting a holiday post out there early. Your color pallet is simply divine! It never ceases to amaze me on how you can pull it all together. If I attempted color schemes out of my norm it'd be all sorts of clash and maybe even, dare I say it, gaudy.
I've hosted Thanksgiving one time in my life thus far and it was for a bunch of marines. Somehow, after various calls to the MIL, I pulled it off. The turkey was phenomenal (not even trying to toot my own horn or anything). Although it goes to say that we didn't have the proper cookware and I was cleaning my oven for a couple weeks after that haha. We did ask our guests to bring their fav dishes since we were from all over the US. It was such a blast and memories to never forget. And to top it off, we purchased a bunch of $1 store containers as their parting gift wrapped in festive ribbon. You know, to fill them with leftovers without worrying about sending the dish back to us.
We're not decorating for Turkey day this year or maybe any year until we have a kitchen fit for kings (we have a GINORMOUS family) since we sort of hop around that day.
Trisha, thank you times a million for your awesome comment! I LOVE the feedback (plus it was all super sweet stuff that puffed up my head to the size and shape of a pumpkin)!
That sounds like one of the best Thanksgiving memories ever, and it's so heart-warming! Your idea to include take-home containers = genius. (Seriously, you could so turn that into a blog post. It's an awesome idea!)
I'd love to come over for Thanksgiving dinner! Your table settings are so nice and bed linens are totally fair game for table linens! Just have to wash them first haha
Thanks Caitlin!
Haha, yes, should have included that as a tip in the blog post 😉
Oh Brynne, that story made me laugh. I am sorry that your pain is so funny, but it seems that you are finally able to laugh about it yourself. It reminds me of the time that I cooked dinner for an ex-boyfriend. Everything went well until about ten minutes after we finished eating, when I rushed into the bathroom and was violently ill. He had the most horrified look I have ever seen on his face when I came out. Thankfully, it turned out not to be the food I had prepared but rather a virus that I had contracted.
Your decorations are beautiful.
Good! What good is past pain if it can't provide present entertainment? 😉 Love your horrified ex story! I can only imagine the look on his face!
Who needs food? Consuming food on that beautiful table setting would just make your pretty handiwork go to waste. 😉 I definitely like the idea of eating elsewhere. It still fills your home with the holiday spirit without all the mess!
Exactly! Plus, I get to dress up pretty and someone else does all the cooking!!
I love this. Endlessly. I'm sitting here scrolling through these photos thinking, "Ooh, she made a pretty leaf garland!" and then I get to your caption: "I put some dead leaves on a string." Hahaha!! I may or may not have snorted at that.
Megan, you're the best! I snorted at your comment, so we're even 🙂
Exactly what happened to me, Megan!
I haven't decorated (or even planned decorating) a thing yet, and we are having the full Thanksgiving tomorrow… But now I have hope. I'll be outside collecting dead things at 6 am tomorrow. 😉
Woohoo! Go free Thanksgiving decorations scooped up from the beneficent great outdoors! Yay Christina!
looks awesome, brynne! i love the candelabra and LOVE the addition of the paisley scarf- so smart!
Thanks Cassie! You're so sweet! That antler candelabra is one of my favorite Goodwill finds 🙂
I'd totally come to your fake dinner party and eat your fake turkey (I'm slightly terrified for the real thing at your house ;)). Great tablescape!
I promise if you come over, I will not feed you, lol – I have sworn off cooking turkeys for the foreseeable future 😉
Thanks Michelle!
ha! I'm staring down cooking a real life turkey and having a million people in my house, so your fake table + eating out plan is looking pretty good to me. Also, so is your table….love the runner and the gold, glittery leaves!
Thanks Gretchen! Best of luck with your real life turkey – I bet you'll rock it and give you people awesome food comas rather than food poisoning 😉
Your table looks beautiful Brynne! Even if you don't eat at it 😉 I love the gold chargers and mixing the china it's so pretty!
Aw, thanks Dria! 🙂
This entire space is positively dreamy. I love it all – the table, the chairs and the lovely leaves garland! Just perfect for fall and Thanksgiving. You certainly do not suck at Thanksgiving!
Thanks for linking up to Dare to DIY!
Kim, thanks so much! I guess I'll just rest on my laurels from this year onward 😉 Hope your Thanksgiving day was great!