Thanksgiving Party
Featured Recipes
Snack Ideas
Decorating Ideas
“Hand in Hand” Garland: Paper chains are a fun, cheerful, and inexpensive way to decorate your home for the holidays. They are also a great activity to keep the kids occupied while you’re busy in the kitchen. For a unique and personal paper chain, trace your family members’ hand prints onto red, yellow, orange, and brown construction paper or felt. Cut out each hand print and connect them all together in a chain using tape or a stapler. Or you can attach the hand prints in a circle to make a wreath. Then hang the garland or wreath around the room for a cheerful, personal decoration that symbolizes the importance of family.
Thanksgiving Nature Wreath: Why buy a fancy autumn wreath when making one at home is so much fun? Take the kids outside to hunt for fall objects, such as pine cones, pine needles, leaves, berries, twigs, and flowers from the yard. Start with a base of raffia twisted into a circle, then use wire and a glue gun to attach the natural objects. Complete the look with a ribbon bow at the top, using the excess ribbon to create a loop for hanging your wreath.
Tip: For a modern look, try using only one type of object from nature for the entire wreath, such as just berries or just pine cones.
A Sweet Centerpiece: Forget the cornucopia for a Thanksgiving centerpiece — have your guests salivate all through dinner as you display this delicious
Pumpkin-Shaped Cake. Proudly set the cake on a cake plate lined with faux leaves around the edge. Your only problem will be keeping little fingers away until dessert time!
Cranberry Candles: Make your own gorgeous candle display to use as a centerpiece or anywhere else in the room that needs a little brightening up. Take any clear glass bowl, jar, or vase that you already have and fill it about halfway up with cranberries. Then simply add any small candle for a beautiful and elegant display.
☆Tip: Put two or three different sized or shaped glass containers together to make a bolder statement.
☆Tip: To add more color to your display, try layering pine needles, cranberries, and orange peels in the glass.
Activities
Thanksgiving Telephone: Before guests arrive, prepare slips of paper with different Thanksgiving sentences written or typed on them. Make the sentences rather long, and the funnier the better. Example: “Peter the Pilgrim was supposed to bring in the turkey for dinner, but he was too scared it would gobble him up.”
When everyone is seated at the table after dinner, have one person draw a slip of paper and whisper the sentence into the ear of the person next to them. That person then repeats the sentence, whispering it into the person’s ear on their other side, who whispers it to the next person, and so on around the table. When it gets all the way around to the last person, he or she says the sentence out loud. Then the person who started the game reads the slip of paper to reveal the real sentence so everyone can laugh at the difference! Take turns drawing slips of paper and play as many times as you want. You can always make up sentences on the spot if you run out of paper slips!
Guess Who?: Why not get to know your family members a little better this holiday season? When your guests arrive, have them write down a fact about themselves on a piece of paper. Make sure they know not to include their name. The facts should be fun, silly, or personal statements that no one else is likely to know. Put all of the facts into a decorative tin, jar, bowl, or basket. After dinner, have everyone take turns drawing slips of paper out of the container and guessing whom each fact is about! There’s no need to rush from turn to turn- take time to get the full story behind each fact. You’re sure to be surprised by the interesting things you never knew about your own relatives!
Party Favors
Mini Recipe Books: Send your Thanksgiving guests home with mini recipe books filled with a few holiday baking ideas for the upcoming weeks! We have detailed directions on how to make an adorable recipe book your guests will cherish. What a fun and easy way to thank your guests for sharing Thanksgiving Day with you!
Lovely Leftovers: Before guests arrive, decorate the tops of disposable plastic containers with ribbon or bows. Use a permanent marker to write a message on the top of each box. A simple “Happy Thanksgiving” works just fine, or if you have the time, customize the messages with guests’ names and a more personal note. After dinner, put leftovers in the boxes and send them home with your guests to enjoy the next day!
Thanksgiving Printables
We have plenty of ideas and helpful tools for you to print out at home to make Thanksgiving easy. Now that’s something to be thankful for!
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