Getting Ready for the Holidays: Thanksgiving Home Tour

Today I’m linking up with Erika and Shay for Working it Wednesday. Each month is a different topic and this month we are talking about getting ready for the holidays.  It is so hard to believe, but, here we are two weeks from Thanksgiving! My husband and I have been hosting  Thanksgiving ever since we moved into our home over seven years ago. So, while we’ve been in charge of this holiday and some of it’s become routine, there is still a lot of preparations to be done before the big day! So today, I’ll give a Thanksgiving home tour and share how we get ready for the holiday.

The day after Halloween all of the spooky decorations came down as I couldn’t wait to start fresh! I try to keep things pretty simple but festive for Thanksgiving. We put Christmas decorations up the day after Thanksgiving, so we go from one holiday to the next! By the time January hits I am so ready for a simple and clean house!!

Thanksgiving Home Tour

First thing I do to decorate for any holiday is swap out decor in all of my seasonal spots in the kitchen! I update my tiered tray with my Thanksgiving Rae Dunn mugs. I’ve got several Thanksgiving themed mugs plus some other mugs that I can tie into the Thanksgiving theme. I love updating this tray for the seasons!

Two Tiered Wood Tray available here.

I also added a little color to my coffee station. I put some fall faux flowers in my favorite Rae Dunn mug–PUMPKIN SPICE!

In a post last week, I talked about our Thanksgiving thankful chalkboard activity. The chalkboard area is another fun part of the house to change up. I update the blanket, the pillow and the basket fillers for each holiday/season.

My candy corn candy dispenser is still going strong from earlier in the fall. Pretty soon I’ll be replacing this with red and green M & Ms!

Always love switching up my Lightbox to go with the seasons or events in our family!

The kitchen is ready to go for Thanksgiving Day! If only it could stay clean for two weeks!

Over in the dining area, I have a simple table set up since we often use this table for dinner. I’ll set it up a little more fancy on the actual day of Thanksgiving.

I’ve kept this apple themed mantle up since earlier in the fall.

In the family room, I just made a few updates including this ‘Give Thanks’ banner I made a few years ago. Can you tell I like garlands?!

I also can’t resist adding in some of the kid’s homemade decorations. I save a few of the best from year to year and put them in storage with the rest of my decorations so that when I pull out the boxes every year I get to see some of their precious artwork!

I still have some work to do on the bar cart but this is a popular spot in the house over the holidays. I will keep our drink station over here!

Getting Yourself Organized for the Holidays

Besides, getting the house decorated, there are a lot of to-do’s for Thanksgiving! I try to get the kids involved in the holiday preparations. I have them create place cards for each dinner guest. It’s fun to pull these out every year and see how their handwriting changes over time!

We might need to up our game this year now that the kids are older and can get more crafty. I am eyeing this adorable name card set up from HGTV. So cute!

I also make sure I have enough supplies: glassware, plates, paper products and dishware. Once, when having a large crowd, I had to run out for water glasses last minute! So do yourself a favor and take a count of your glassware and dishware before the guests arrive! We use paper plates and napkins for appetizers and desserts and I pull out the wedding china for it’s annual appearance during the main course.

Lastly, I make sure to order the turkey and plan the menu in advance! I just placed my turkey order on Monday, so I can check one thing off of my list! We don’t deviate from our menu very much, so I don’t have to search for new recipes. But, I do like to write my shopping lists a few weeks in advance. Then, if I see deals at the grocery, I buy in advance. It helps the budget to spread out the Thanksgiving shopping over a few weeks!

What are some of your to-do’s over the next few weeks? Do you get a little crazy getting ready for Thanksgiving?! For more Thanksgiving inspiration, head over to my Thanksgiving Pinterest board!

See you back here on Friday for my weekly favorites!