Table setting ideas for Thanksgiving

CHICOPEE, Mass. (Mass Appeal) - After cooking the turkey, your job is only half done. You can make your turkey look even more appetizing by setting an awesome table. Phyllis Boucher, an interior designer, helps us with that.

The first one is a budget-friendly table setting. Everything here was bought at a dollar store.

The napkins and place mats come in packages of four to six. You can get what you need. Same with the dishes.

You either need a place mat or tablecloth. You need the dishes that you are certainly going to be eating out of. You need your silverware. You need your glasses. You also need, especially if you have a big party, especially Thanksgiving, you need some place to put the person's name where you want them to sit.

We have a candle and it can be a gift that the person can take with them, or you can light it so they have a little candle at each place setting.

This one is a little bit more elegant. This one is for someone who wants to be a little more casual, which is very much the style these days. Again, we have the place mat. We have instead of china, we have a ceramic dish set that picks up the holiday feel to it because it has the fruits and vegetables on it.

That's what you want to do because Thanksgiving is celebrating the harvest. A cup that matches the setting. What this can be is your own personal wine cooler. You would put the cup in the freezer and then put your bottle of wine in it. It's a little more casual and people can serve themselves.

This one is the super elegant, very formal setting. What we have is you'll notice we have the same place mat, if you will, but we have used ribbon to make it a little bit more elegant.

We have the charger. A charger is something that goes under the plate that makes it a little bit more formal, a little more dressy. You see them sometimes in higher end restaurants.

Then we have the true china and crystal that matches our glass ware. We have our silver flatware. Our place setting again is we have a pear that matches the color scheme and you would put person's name on this, which we made a leaf. I try to leave them white because it stands out. But you can print the name in color or you can do it in black and white which really stands out for people.

What you want to do at Thanksgiving, it's usually a family event. You want to put something on the table that shows the family event in years past. It ties the family into the whole holiday, rather than talking about sports or politics or something like that. What it does, people love to see themselves in pictures. So they can see themselves, but they will also see people that are not there this year or if you know young children and you can see how they have grown over the year. It really ties the family into the event. It really is part of the tradition of Thanksgiving.

Because you're celebrating the harvest, you really want to bring natural items in. You can bring in a cornucopia which is the horn of plenty and fill with fruits and vegetables. You can do nice floral arrangements. Like the first piece we had to have some blue in it. You could do a light blue tablecloth. You don't have to stay with the holiday colors. Then you could do a nice floral arrangement with dried arranges that pick up the blue color. Because we have pears in some of the settings, you can then take pears and put a skewer in the bottom of it. Put the pears in a nice floral arrangement and with the hydrangeas, they can be beautiful. You can put dried leaves on the table.

You can put just about anything you want on the table.