How to Style a Thanksgiving Table with Pumpkins, Leaves & candles

Last year, when we couldn’t have Thanksgiving dinner with family, my sister-in-law invited us to use her mountain home for the weekend. It was so good to get out of our house at that point in the pandemic. There is something so relaxing about being even an hour away from home. Thanksgiving morning, the girls and I got to scavenge through my SIL’s kitchen and pantry, looking for table settings.

Talk about kid in a candy store! I brought a few things from home, but mainly we used what we found. You won’t have these same decor items or dishes, but you can follow these same steps to build up the layers of a well-set table.

(Isn’t her dining room gorgeous? The light and view down the mountain is amazing.)

Tablecloth & runner

I love the look of a wood table, but to protect the table, we used a too-small orange tablecloth that I brought from home. We found a pretty antique table runner, and added that to the center of the table. Those choices also sum up our color palette: shades of orange and brown with pops of white.

Centerpiece

This huge, preserved wood slice usually sits on my SIL’s kitchen island, but we used it to give height to our centerpiece. On top and on either side of the wood slice, we placed etched hurricane lamps with candles, then added five pie pumpkins and two faux leaf garlands. (The leaf garlands were an Amazon find, and they were great because we could bend and twist them into shape. Honestly, I was surprised at how nice they were for the price.)

place settings

Place settings are always the most fun. We started with brown rattan placemats, then added brown transferware dinner plates, topped with ivory, leaf-shaped salad plates. We didn’t have linen napkins (I should find some for my SIL to match the table runner as a thank-you gift), but we rounded things out with silverware and water glasses.

serving pieces

I like to keep my serving pieces all the same, but that can be a tall order for a holiday centered around sides. We found beautiful cut glass, and added milk glass and silver to that. That combination matched well with the hurricane lamps and the silverware.

This couldn’t have been easier, and how fun was it to play with someone else’s goodies? What are you doing for Thanksgiving this year?