Now that Halloween is behind us, I can’t help but think of the next holiday to come. Thanksgiving will be here before you know it! I always end up spending the days before Thanksgiving focusing on the food, and often the decorations go by the wayside. This year I’m trying to get a jump on things, though, so I started looking for inspiration.

I found it with some cute printables from Your LifEvents, a fun little Etsy shop that has lots of designs for every holiday and event you can imagine. Sure, we usually do our own designs for things like this, but sometimes help is a good thing. When you let somebody else do the designs for you, you get to have fun actually using them! You can easily create napkin rings, custom water bottles, pennants, placecards… all the things you usually want for your festivities.

But you know me. I couldn’t just go with the flow and do what was expected. I thought I’d see what else I could come up with to use these images in a new and different way. First I printed a bunch of the square designs out and cut them out.

Then I thought about how to use them on the dinner table, and I thought about a centerpiece. In my family, the centerpiece is usually the turkey, and I have a big platter I always use. What I really needed was a special “placemat” of sorts to put the platter on, to dress up the turkey. I grabbed a piece of scrap fabric in a pretty olive green and cut it a little larger than my platter.

Then I used some hot glue to attach the squares around the edge of the fabric. I let them twist back and forth and didn’t try to make it perfect, which gave it a nice artsy feel.

The result was a special serving mat for my turkey platter that I think will look great on the Thanksgiving table. It will be a good conversation piece, too, as everyone talks about the images and words near them. I’m getting hungry just thinking about that turkey!

P.S. Like these templates? Stay tuned tomorrow, and we just might have a set to give away!