Thanksgiving

Window painting is the best kind of seasonal decorating for a rental. It costs very little, takes an hour, leaves no marks when you do it right, and it can switch to snowflakes the weekend after Thanksgiving. Here’s what to draw, and what to draw with. What to use Liquid chalk markers for grown-up designs. The Bandle B. liquid chalk markers (on Amazon) come in 24 colors and are water-based. The maker says they wipe off non-porous surfaces like glass with a damp cloth. They also say never to use them on a chalkboard, so keep them on the window. ...

Thanksgiving 2026 falls on Thursday, November 26. Friendsgiving is often the weekend before. If you are going to someone else’s table, the useful present is one that lands in their kitchen drawer or linen stack—not another vase that needs shelf space in a small apartment. What’s in this post Cloth for the table they already have Something they wear while cooking A tool that comes out once a year Candlelight without a new jar collection Cloth for the table they already have A placemat and napkin set is the hostess gift that disappears into a drawer and comes back every November. The DII Give Thanks Garnet Hemstitch placemat and plaid napkin set (on Amazon) includes four placemats and four napkins. The placemats are 13 by 19 inches; the napkins are 20 by 20 inches, in cotton. Garnet hemstitch with plaid reads as fall without locking them into a single motif they will not want in January. ...

The weeks between Halloween and Christmas are awkward for decorating. Thanksgiving is still ahead, but the stores are already full of Christmas, and nobody wants to redecorate the whole apartment twice in a month. The trick is to build fall decor that’s already half Christmas, then change it in small steps. What stays all season Some things work from October to January. Leave them out and change what’s around them: ...

Carved pumpkins are done by the first week of November. Painted ones aren’t. A pumpkin with no cuts in it can sit on a shelf or a table for six weeks or more, which is why I’d rather paint than carve when the goal is decorating rather than a jack-o’-lantern for one night. The other reason: if you choose your colors right, the same pumpkins carry you from Halloween straight through Thanksgiving. ...

Place cards seem formal, but they solve a real problem at any size of table: the awkward moment when everyone stands around holding their drinks, waiting for someone to say where to sit. A name at each seat ends that. It also lets you put the chatty uncle at the far end and the two people who haven’t met next to each other. And they’re one of the cheapest ways to make a table look finished. Here are a few versions, all quick. ...

When the dining table only seats four and there are nine of you, a sit-down Thanksgiving with every dish passed around isn’t going to work. A buffet does. Everyone fills a plate, finds a seat wherever there’s one (sofa, floor cushion, the arm of a chair), and the table is free for the food. The tricky part in a small apartment isn’t the food, it’s the traffic. Here’s how to set it up so people aren’t queuing through the kitchen while you’re trying to carve. ...

The kitchen fills up right after Thanksgiving dinner. Everyone wants coffee at the same moment, someone can’t find the pie server, and whoever cooked is stuck by the sink trying to start the dishes. A dessert bar fixes most of that, and it doesn’t need to be fancy. Put pie, coffee and plates on a table in another room, set them out in a sensible order, and people serve themselves. That’s really the whole idea. The rest of this post is the details: where to put it, what order things go in, and how much pie to buy. ...

Most fall wreaths that look off are either too small for the door or too orange and plastic. A good one comes down to three things: the right size, materials that look like they came from outside, and a plan for December, since Christmas comes only four weeks after Thanksgiving. Size Two-thirds of the door’s width. A standard 36-inch door takes a 24-inch wreath, like this 22 to 24-inch harvest wreath (on Amazon). A narrow 30-inch apartment door takes about 20. A wide 42-inch door can carry 28. Too small is the usual mistake: a 16-inch wreath on a 36-inch door looks swallowed. Measure your door before you go shopping and keep the number in your phone. ...

If you decorate for Halloween, most of it comes down on November 1 and the entry sits bare until Christmas. A harvest look instead, with pumpkins, dried leaves, wheat and warm wood, looks right all through October and November. Then for Thanksgiving week you just add a few things rather than starting over. The porch and door Pumpkins in a group. Three or five, in a loose triangle: one big, two medium, two small. Mix colors, a white one next to orange next to a blue-green heirloom. Odd numbers and different heights look like a harvest; even numbers look like a store display. ...

You don’t need a long farmhouse table and fourteen chairs. People remember the food, the company and whether they had somewhere comfortable to sit. Eight people around one table in a small apartment can feel more like a feast than a big formal dining room ever does. Here’s how to make it work, in five parts. 1. Choose the table Dinner happens wherever the biggest flat surface is. A 6-foot folding table (on Amazon). Seats six, or eight with one person at each end. Put a floor-length tablecloth over it and nobody will think about what’s underneath. The kitchen island. Stools on both sides seat four to six. Two tables pushed together. A desk or card table against the end of your regular table, with one long cloth over both, seats eight. Measure ahead of time. Each person needs about 24 inches along the edge of the table, and there needs to be about 36 inches behind the chairs so people can get up. A 6-foot table is 72 inches: three people per side, exactly. ...