Modern Thanksgiving Tablescape Ideas

*Today’s post was made possible by CrossCountry Mortgage. All opinions are my own.

I’m more excited than ever that Thanksgiving is next week. It has been a really tough year for us, what with the sudden unexpected loss of our one-year-old cat Joe and my health issues, so I can’t wait to kick off my very favorite season. We really go all out for this holiday, especially the day after Thanksgiving when we celebrate Christmas with a day full of decorating, baking, holiday movies, and Christmas tunes. This year I’m going to savor every single moment.

To help inspire your own Thanksgiving holiday, I wanted to share the DIY holiday tablescape I designed in partnership with CrossCountry Mortgage for their Instagram account. You can see the video I put together for them here, then keep scrolling for lots of photos of the festive setup, including links to all the resources I could find. If I don’t have a direct link to something I used, I tried to find something similar so you can copy the look down to every last paper leaf and water glass. Let’s get to it!

Our dining room isn’t large. It’s more of a pass-through between the kitchen and the front entry/hallway to the bedrooms, but I think we’ve managed to make the most of the space without impeding the flow of daily traffic. Our table isn’t expandable, but it comfortably (or at least cozily) seats six people. To make the table look and feel a little more formal than normal, I started by laying down a linen tablecloth. The great thing about linen is that it’s a naturally wrinkled textile, so you don’t have to worry about steaming or ironing it smooth. Next, I placed leather placemats at each chair. It’s a little redundant to use placemats on top of a tablecloth, but I think it’s that added layer that makes the table feel more formal.

Next went the plates. I used our everyday dinner plates for the base, and then placed a smaller holiday-themed leaf salad plate on top. The ones you see on our table came from Target and are already sold out, sadly, but I found a similar option here. Any small plate with a leafy motif on it will do, though. I flanked each plate with my mom’s nice wedding silver, and a patterned glass that can be used for either wine or water (of course, I had extras on hand in case anyone wanted both beverages). A simple brown cloth napkin tied with coordinating velvet ribbon was the perfect finishing touch for each place setting.

Let’s talk through the centerpieces. I decorated down the middle of the table with paper leaves that I’ve actually had for years and years. You can source a similar option here from Etsy, or I just saw someone on the NYT Cooking YouTube channel use real leaves as tabletop décor. She and her family collected fallen leaves from the park a couple of weeks before the holiday, and pressed them between pages in heavy cookbooks. Then, when the holiday arrived, she took the flattened dried leaves out from between the book pages and laid them across the dinner table for a splash of color and texture. I love that idea!

For my centerpiece, I opted to bring in a branch clipped from the bushes planted on the side of our house. I love the height and that pop of color from the bright red berries, and the green fluted glass vase is a new staple in my collection that I know I’ll use year after year. Candles are a must for Thanksgiving dinner, in my opinion, so I grabbed some glass candle holders from Target to pull the jewel-toned color theme throughout the tablescape. A couple of vintage serving pieces, my mid-century glass water pitcher, and a new wooden salad bowl completed the look.

Resources: Leather Placemats, Dinner Plates, Similar Leafy Salad Plates, Similar Wood Bowl, Similar Linen Tablecloth, Water Glasses, Similar Paper Leaves, Cloth Napkins, Similar Velvet Ribbon, Blue Glass Candle Holder, Pink Glass Candle Holder, Green Glass Candle Holder, Taper Candles, Green Fluted Glass Vase

Don’t forget that you can click here to see the whole tablescape come together in video format on the CrossCountry Mortgage Instagram account! This is actually the first time that I’ve decorated our dining room for a formal get-together, and I genuinely love how it turned out. I was so worried that our small space wouldn’t accommodate a full spread like this, but everything fit just fine, and made the space feel warm and cozy rather than cluttered. Just goes to show that you don’t need a grand dining room or massive expandable table to host your friends and family this holiday. What are your Thanksgiving plans? Let me know in the comments!

*This post contains affiliate links, which means that I may earn a small commission when you purchase products that I recommend at no additional cost to you. This allows me to provide free creative content for you to read, save, and share. Rest assured that I never recommend products we wouldn’t use or don’t already love ourselves.