Usually, I am at my sister-in-law’s down in Florida for Thanksgiving, but this year, we find ourselves staying at home.  So, I am hosting both my family and my in-laws for dinner!  I told Chica that I needed to come up with a centerpiece for my Thanksgiving table.  She looked at me oddly and said, “Isn’t your turkey the centerpiece?”  Well, no, not usually.  Chica has a small family.  Jo has a very large family.  We need multiple tables to seat everyone for dinner and lord help me if I chose one table over another to have the turkey displayed!  The turkey, along with the rest of the food, resides in the kitchen.  I am expecting other large families have the same set-up as I do so I thought I would share my alternative Thanksgiving table with you.

I don’t like to do the expected.  I do enough of the expected in my day-to-day life so whenever I have a chance, I like to do something out of the ordinary.  This time, it involves me getting wild and crazy with my Thanksgiving table.  I know, pretty lame excuse for wildness, but what can I say?  The traditional Thanksgiving turkey is the bird being served this year, the bird highlighted on my table is the peacock! 

No worries, I am not going to serve a peacock. I’m just going to decorate with them.  I love the colors captured in the peacock feathers.  It makes it really easy to form a table color palette. So, I went to the craft store knowing I wanted to do peacocks and that I needed a long and low arrangement and I wanted candles in it.  I filled up my cart with all sorts of various decorative items and brought them all home.  It’s very important for me to keep my receipt in this case because I tend to buy triple what since I don’t know exactly what I am doing until I am actually doing it.

For this centerpiece, I started with a piece of foam from a package I received, cut to size using my electric knife.  It worked like a dream!  I then covered the foam in purple tissue paper to hide the white.  I knew I wanted three taper candles placed down the middle and the peacock feathers sticking out either side to elongate the arrangement.

From there, the instructions really are hazy.  I basically kept sticking things in until I had a nice full look.  I had purchased two garland strands that I cut up.  Those are the glittery leaves you see in the pictures. To cover the top, around the candles, I used glass marbles in coordinating colors.  I glued one line of the marbles around the edge and just placed the rest in the middle.  The glued ones kept the ones in the middle in place.  Now, when I am finished with this centerpiece, I can reuse the marbles.

I also wanted to make some simple napkin rings to continue the peacock theme.  To do this, I took a simple wrapping paper tube and cut it into pieces a few inches long.  I covered the tube with ribbon by wrapping the ribbon around and stapling it along the back.  Then, I found an image of a peacock I really liked online.  I printed it out onto card stock and cut it out.

Hmm… the printed peacock image looked rather bland compared to my elaborate centerpiece.  As our good friend Crafty Chica would tell us, it needed some glitter!  She has a line of glitter out in Michael’s stores now that is wonderful to work with, so I added a bit of it to the tips of the feathers to make them really sparkle. I will tell you all about Crafty Chica and all of her wonderful glitteryness on Friday.  But for now, back to my peacocks.

Satisfied with the addition of the purple glitter, I started to fold the napkin into an accordion shape so that when I placed it in the ring, it would fan out to look like additional tail feathers.

Chica insisted I have a turkey somewhere in this post so I printed out a turkey and put him on a napkin ring, just for her.  I agree though, the turkey is cute and rather appropriate for Thanksgiving.

I set my table with a green cloth and placed the centerpiece in the middle and the napkins on each place setting.  I am now all ready for my guests!  Honestly, I am looking forward to seeing my father-in-law with purple glitter on him. I will be so amused!