Give your tablescape a curated look straight from the pages of a magazine photo shoot starting with DIY Thanksgiving centerpieces and fresh floral decor. Make it about more than the world’s most celebrated cheat day when you add thoughtful floral accents that highlight the atmosphere as well as the food.
Creating ambience and warmth as essential accents central to making your holiday gathering beautiful may be the easiest part of your holiday gathering. At its core, Thanksgiving is about gratitude and what better way to show how thankful you are than with a handmade creation that shows intention, mindfulness and adds a little creative flair to your holiday decor?
Fundamentals of DIY Thanksgiving Centerpieces
We put together a DIY Thanksgiving flower checklist with thematic motifs that will help you make this year memorable. Whether you’re throwing a Friendsgiving or spending your first year with your in-laws, there are some essential parts of putting together floral holiday decorations:
Fall Color Palettes and Beyond
A simple search and scroll through Pinterest will lay out the essential Fall color schemes for the Thanksgiving season. Everything in reds, oranges, yellows and ochres, the changing colors of the leaves directly reflected in the shades of items from seasonal attire to everyday products in holiday varieties. While it can be helpful to stick with the traditional Fall color palette as a starting point, don’t be afraid to break with tradition and add some vibrant highlights.
Brighter colors used sparingly and strategically can add unexpected life and vibrance to standard design motifs. Starting with an easy base flower like Autumn-themed bicolor roses, you can build on their foundation to add a few daring color combinations that show off your design skills. For more of a challenge you can begin with less seasonal colors and bring your arrangement into the meal with subtle Fall accents.
For a centerpiece that won’t clash, it helps to start with simple, seasonal colors and work your way out. You can always remove additional flowers and put them in a separate vase to brighten other areas of the house. But remember, even the greatest works of art ever created were the result of experimentation and curiosity. Trust your instincts, DIY Thanksgiving centerpieces that make an impression are all about following your passions, design sense and creative instincts.
Decor- Looking Beyond the Table
From the coffee table to decorating the front door, each area provides an area ready to be decorated where flower arrangements can transform other rooms into integral parts of the celebration. Tradition is a large part of the Thanksgiving celebration, heirlooms and family mementos that have been part of gatherings for generations often make an appearance. Adding flowers to existing centerpieces can give them a fresh aesthetic as well as bring a lively update to the table motif.
This is where things get really fun, choosing not only colors that match the table and food but specific flowers which may not include those traditionally used in homemade Thanksgiving centerpieces. Common fall flowers used in DIY Thanksgiving centerpieces are:
Yellow Daisies
Roses
Sunflowers
Chrysanthemums
Heliopsis
Though for more seasonally diverse tables, you can opt for less traditional flowers that bring a little variety and lush color to your holiday flower arrangement such as:
Proteas
Anemones
Carnations
Asters
Succulents
For the trendy creative holiday curators, succulents can be useful for bridging color schemes and themes. They often have muted, green tonality which includes yellowish hues, making it easy to tie them with flowers that will transition into oranges, yellows and greens. Starting with a succulent based bouquet can help create your vision of how to make a centerpiece design you’ll love.
Different types of succulents can span color combination barriers and help to transition seemingly separate floral elements. If you’re planning a Thanksgiving that incorporates ideas of sustainability, succulents don’t require much water and maintenance and can be reused every year as the basis of a festive centerpiece. Plus, for those who want their artistic input to stand out, a DIY Thanksgiving centerpiece incorporating non-traditional elements may be exactly what you need to make it a conversation piece as well as an aesthetic one.
Food – Dressing the Table For Success
Whether you realize it or not, DIY and homemade items are at the core of Thanksgiving; from time-honored recipes perfected carefully in the kitchen to artful carousels of eclectic pot luck feasts. Typically, they involve core dishes complemented by the personal twists of their creators. Creatively adding to traditional holiday bouquets can help to harness adaptation and modern concepts in much the same way.
It may not seem like a typical way to start planning your decorating, but thanksgiving flower arrangements can be paired to the colors of the meal itself. In fact, if you’re already planning to make squash or pumpkin soup consider preserving the outside of your pumpkins or gourds as the foundation for a DIY centerpiece vase. A hollow gourd can provide the ideal thematic basis for an autumn centerpiece or flower display that looks like an essential part of the table dressing.
Homemade is a Centerpiece of Thanksgiving Traditions
From curating musical playlists, to preparing the food, Thanksgiving is a day for everyone to showcase their own creative talents. Whether it’s your personal brownie recipe (we all know there’s a little cinnamon in there) or the secret spices your add to your yams (also not a secret), everyone seems to bring something special to their holiday contributions that are unique and creative. It’s become an opportunity for those of us who enjoy adding DIY accents to holiday gatherings to really show off our talents and turn the materials at hand into decorative accents that brighten the room.
Holiday wreaths can become the basis for the construction and layout of a centerpiece. Positioning it around a central flower arrangement, attaching candles or pinecones can add an additional design layer that provides depth and elevates the importance of the central bouquet. If you are the floral curator of your Thanksgiving, it is entirely up to you where the flowers go. Essentially, you can protect loved ones from unwanted conversations with your relatives across the table with strategically placed DIY Thanksgiving centerpieces.
Have you been so caught up with the food and other things that you haven’t even thought about the flowers? Not to worry, we’ve got a selection of Fall centerpieces with a beautiful handmade look ready to go. Can’t think of what to bring? Not sure if you’re even going to make it? Why not send flowers, either way you’re covered.
No doubt the meal is a holiday centerpiece everyone looks forward to. But designing how the tablescape looks by creating a central floral arrangement that provides a foundation for your Thanksgiving theme can be the perfect beginning to the look of your gathering. It has become a way to add to the overall ambience of making for a picturesque, beautiful holiday affair that isn’t as much about eating as it is about creating warm memories.
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