The Common Thrift Store Find You Can Turn Into The Perfect Thanksgiving Centerpiece

Hosting Thanksgiving in your home is an excellent opportunity to showcase your creative skills and make your guests eager to discover how you pull off a fabulous decorating job and an extraordinary meal. When it comes to thrift store decor items to elevate your Thanksgiving table, this might not be one you thought of. If you're in a slump for new ideas for your dining centerpiece, we found a unique way you can upcycle a common thrift store find into the perfect Thanksgiving decor. All you need to do is thrift an old book and we'll tell you how to transform it into a festive turkey for one of the most budget-friendly ways to decorate for the Thanksgiving holiday.

The book should be around 200 pages in length — perferably with a cover and end papers that match the season — to pull off a nice, full turkey. Besides an old hardcover book, you likely have everything else you need, such as a black marker, a ruler, an exacto knife, a hot glue gun, and glue sticks. This project will require some time and may not be suitable for children to assist with, as it involves the use of a sharp knife and hot glue. However, it is easy enough that you don't have to be a crafting genius to pull it off.

To turn your book into a turkey, you'll need to open the front cover of the book, measure to find the middle of the page horizontally, and use your knife to cut the bottom section (yes, all 200 or so pages) out of the book — this will leave you with the top half of each page still connected to the spine. Put the removed partial pages to the side and dog-ear all the attached pages, folding the front of the upper corner of each page into the binding, to create triangles. Once every page is folded, fan them out.

The next step is to roll the pages you cut out of the book into cones, secure them with a dab of hot glue, and then glue each one into the book cover behind the pages you folded and fanned out. You want these to look layered, just like a turkey's back tail feathers. Finally, take one of the pages and draw a turkey head and neck on both sides (or use a free turkey-on-a-book-page printout). Cut it out and glue it between your folded pages at the top of the book's spine. It's all ready to grace your dinner table.

If you want a more colorful turkey, you can paint or draw on the book pages before gluing everything together. Natural or colored, this book turkey is sure to be the talk of all of your friends and family. Plus, it's a unique way to breathe new life into old or used books.