CRAFT: Thanksgiving Day Place Cards (or Name Tags)

Thanksgiving is less than a week away, and I am fairly calm. Why? Because this is my husband’s harvest pretty much 100 percent. He does all of the shopping the weekend (and days, sometimes hours) before, prepares and cooks everything (aside from a handful of traditional side dishes and desserts brought in by our gracious guests) the day before and all day-of, and arranges and presents the feast every single year. Yes, he’s a holiday rock star. However, and to his well-deserved credit, he’s been hosting these ginormous Thanksgiving feasts for his and other families well before I (and my family) arrived on the scene, so on this day I pretty much just became another mouth to feed in a crowd that averages about a dozen or so folks, give or take (this year we think we’re closer to 15). All the same, C’s still awesome (no, he doesn’t pay me to write these things, honest!).

As for the holiday clean up? That’s my domain, along with a couple of other helpers every year (thanks, Mom and Grandma Shirl… oh yeah, can you help again?!), and I am more than happy to help on the flip-side, even if I do gobble a bit about it during the time it takes me to get-it-done. At least there’s plenty of wine and dessert to get me through the job.

And now that there’s a kid in the picture? Yes, OK, T really is just another mouth to feed (and clean up after) today along with being our in-house entertainment… not that this makes it different from any other day really. But seriously, he’s also quite the involved, eager helper not just for holidays but always. So naturally, T wants to know how he can help with Thanksgiving. Aside from decorating our Thanksgiving Day dining room – AKA our living room made over with folding tables and chairs minus our real furnishings other than our TV, need that for football! – and helping to set the table the day-of, I wasn’t coming up with much else he could help with ahead of time.

Pictured here is everything we needed (including part of T’s hand) for T to put together some easy homemade place cards for Thanksgiving Day: Turkey-shaped paper and foam cut-outs, and Thanksgiving- and fall-themed stickers. Add in the pens or markers of your choice and your kids can make some easy yet festive place cards (or name tags), too!

Then I remembered: Place Cards! T’s Grandma Shirl had given me a few packages of foam turkeys a couple of weeks ago and mentioned that T could write Thanksgiving attendees’ names on each one. What a great idea, especially since T is all about writing right now (more about this on the blog soon). And, no, we’re not hugely strict about where folks sit on this great day; as I mentioned above, we’re just happy everyone has a place to sit at the table given our small space!

For each place card, I asked T what kind of paper or cut-out he wanted, what color marker, and what name he wanted to write. After I got him set up, I wrote the name out for him to “copy” onto his card in his own writing.

After T wrote the name on the card, I let him draw on and/or decorate the card with stickers. Some stickers even went on the back of the cards. Whatever you want, T!

Here’s one of T’s finished place cards. While I didn’t want to post too many card “spoilers” I figured four-month-old Ella wouldn’t be reading the blog just yet!

Given there are 15 people coming this year, T can write out and decorate a few cards a day to keep the place card project interesting and fun. I also found some Thanksgiving and fall-themed stickers in my newly organized sticker envelope system (I’ll post about that soon also), so I threw those into the mix, too. Yes, you could also add glitter, glue, glitter glue, or sparkly somethings-or-others, but I decided to keep it easy for T this go-around. I was just thrilled that he kept wanting to come back to write the names, which is the centerpiece of this craft after all.

I need to ask Trader Joe’s corporate if they meant to spell “gobble” this way. Or perhaps you could say a turkey by any other name is still a turkey (?).

T’s been having a great time this week making our Thanksgiving “place cards”! And while they probably won’t be used as actual assigned seat markers, at least everyone coming over next week will be leaving with something savory (sweet?) from our annual event. Now that’s something to gobble about!

I also found these lovely American Greetings decals among my holiday sticker stash for T to use on the place cards.

What kind of projects or crafts are you doing with your kids in anticipation of Thanksgiving next week, RMT’ers?

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