DIY Thanksgiving Place Cards: Funny Turkey Jokes
Make these easy turkey place cards for your Thanksgiving dinner! Plus, all the best Thanksgiving jokes to put on them!
I hosted my first ever Thanksgiving last year. It’s always been on my bucket list to host. The timing ended up being perfect, too, since I found out I have celiac disease a few months later. It was like my last gluten hurrah (haha).
And I had so much fun (and stress…but good stress) doing Thanksgiving. Let’s just say double ovens, detailed planning, and a timed spreadsheet for all the dishes was crucial. My sweet dad still brings up how delicious that meal was (it really was awesome though—scroll to the end for evidence).
Aside from the meal planning, I was also super excited to use my hand-me-down china for the first time and decorate the table. I went simple, but then at the last minute decided to throw these funny turkey jokes into the napkins as place cards. Who doesn’t love a good turkey joke while eating turkey, right?
These cardstock turkeys are so easy to make and everyone at our dinner table loved them (we’re mostly adults, by the way).
If I ever host Thanksgiving again, I’m totally whipping these out again so we can repeat all the silly laughter (it’ll just be sans-gluten rolls next time…*sniffle*).
Keep reading for instructions to make your own turkey jokes!
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Thanksgiving and turkey jokes for the whole family
I think everyone should tell silly jokes like these for Thanksgiving. They’re totally dad jokes (aka corny jokes), but they made Thanksgiving dinner so fun. Here are 35 of my favorite ones (I only used the first nine for my place cards but you can easily edit my project and add any jokes you want):
- What do turkeys say on Thanksgiving? – Moo.
- Why did the turkey go to the dentist? – He needed to get his cavity filled.
- What did the turkey say to the computer? – Google, google.
- What sound does a turkey’s phone make? – Wing, wing.
- Why did the cranberry sauce blush? – He saw the turkey dressing.
- What are turkeys thankful for on Thanksgiving? – Vegetarians.
- What kind of face does a pilgrim make when he’s in pain? – A pil-grimace.
- Why is corn so popular on Thanksgiving? – Because it’s a-maize-ing.
- What do you call a turkey the day after Thanksgiving? – Lucky!
- Why did the police arrest the turkey? – They suspected fowl play.
- Who is never hungry on Thanksgiving? – The turkey, because he’s always stuffed.
- Why did the turkey cross the road? – It was the chicken’s day off.
- Where do you find a turkey with no legs? – Exactly where you left it.
- Why should you never tell secrets in a cornfield? – Because the corn has ears.
- What did the mother turkey say to her disobedient children? – If your father could see you now, he’d turn over in his gravy.
- What sound does a limping turkey make? – Wobble, wobble.
- What do sweet potatoes wear to bed? – Yammies.
- What do you get when you cross a turkey with a ghost? – A poultry-geist.
- If April showers bring May flowers, then what do May flowers bring? – Pilgrims.
- What kind of weather does a turkey like? – Fowl weather.
- What do you call a running turkey? – Fast food.
- What do you call an attractive pilgrim? – A puri-ten!
- Can a turkey jump higher than the Empire State Building? – Of course, buildings can’t jump.
- Which side of the turkey has the most feathers? – The outside.
- What’s the best dance to do on Thanksgiving? – The turkey trot.
- How does a turkey travel? – By gravy train.
- Why can’t you take a turkey to church? – They use fowl language.
- What kind of music do pilgrims like? – Plymouth rock.
- What kind of key can’t open doors? – A turkey.
- Why do turkeys always “gobble, gobble”? – Because they never learned good table manners.
- What did the turkey say to the turkey hunter? – Quack, quack.
- Why do pilgrims’ pants always fall down? – Because they wear their belt buckles on their hats.
- Who helps the little pumpkins cross the road to school? – A crossing gourd.
- What’s a turkey’s favorite dessert? – Peach gobbler.
- What should you tell your family when they ask you to stop telling Thanksgiving jokes? – That you can’t just quit cold turkey.
What you need to make Thanksgiving joke place cards
- Smart paper sticker cardstock*
- cardstock: I only used one color to keep my turkeys neutral, but you can definitely make your turkeys more colorful for kids or to match your tablescape!
- Cricut machine: the Maker 3 or Explore 3 is best if you’re using Smart paper sticker cardstock.
- Cricut pen: I recommend a fine point so the text doesn’t bleed or run together too much.
- Cricut Access subscription: the images and font I used in this project require an Access subscription. Read this to see if Access is worth it for you.
*Smart paper sticker cardstock makes assembling these turkeys so quick, but you can also just glue two layers of regular cardstock together. I actually think I was going to do that but ran out of the cream cardstock I wanted for the top and decided it would save me time anyway to use the sticker cardstock instead.
How to make turkey joke place cards
Customize in Cricut Design Space
Open my Thanksgiving Joke Turkey Place Cards project in Cricut Design Space.
Customize as needed. Feel free to resize the turkeys or adjust the colors to match your materials.
You can also change the font—I like the font I used except that punctuation (exclamation points, particularly) blend together and don’t look as legible. Unfortunately, I think that’s the case for most fonts when drawing, so it is what it is. With other projects, I sometimes leave the punctuation off and hand-draw it in after. For my “Lucky!” turkey, I just corrected the exclamation point by drawing a dot below it.
If you want to change or add your own jokes, just highlight one of the existing turkeys and its text and duplicate it. Then you can click on just the text (you may need to do so from the layers panel) and double click the text box to type the new joke. Resize and recenter as needed. Then just make sure the turkey and the text are still attached to each other so your machine knows to write in the correct spot.
Cut the turkeys
Click Make It. For the load type, select “Multiple Ways – Manually select for each load”. Then you can select the material load type on the next screen for each set of turkeys. Choose Without Mat for the joke questions, which will use Smart paper sticker cardstock. Choose On Mat for the joke answers, which will be on regular cardstock.
Click Continue and choose your material settings for each load.
Insert your pen into Clamp A of your machine and the fine-point blade into Clamp B. For the regular cardstock, load it onto a cutting mat. If you’re using Smart paper sticker cardstock and a compatible machine, you will load the material into your machine by itself (no mat is required).
Follow the Design Space prompts to load, draw, and cut your materials.
When removing the regular cardstock from the mat, flip the mat upside down on your table and peel the mat away from the cardstock, keeping the cardstock flat on your table. This prevents your material from curling and bending.
Assemble the turkeys & display
Peel each Smart paper sticker cardstock turkey from the liner and stick to its corresponding cardstock turkey—you should have a joke question on the front and the answer on the back. If you didn’t use Smart paper sticker cardstock, simply glue your turkeys together (I recommend this glue).
And you’re done! These turkey place cards are so easy!
Display on your Thanksgiving table and enjoy telling jokes through dinner!
I don’t remember exactly how I folded my cloth napkins, but I did them in a way that formed a little pocket for the turkeys to be slipped into (I also tucked a faux maple leaf in with them). You can also just set the turkeys on top of regularly-folded napkins or on the plates themselves, depending how you arrange your table settings.
If you’re wondering, this is my tablecloth. The cloth napkins are from Hobby Lobby.
Funny turkey joke place cards for Thanksgiving
I hope you make these turkey place cards for your own table! They’re so easy and the whole family, kids and adults alike, will love the silly jokes on them.
And because I promised to give you a peek into my family’s Thanksgiving, check out this spread:
Sorry, probably not Instagram-worthy enough for some people. And lots of dishes because #reality. But who really cares when you get to stuff your face with this:
Yum. Happy Thanksgiving!
Don’t forget to pin and save for later!
