Recycled Wood Pallets Thanksgiving Turkey Decoration

With a little bit of ingenuity and a old wood pallet, we were able to make a cute and rustic looking turkey to decorate our front yards with!

If you drive around any "industrial" part of town, you're about 100% likely to find a pallet by a dumpster. Craigslist usually has somebody trying to give them away too. Be mindful of whether or not the pallet has been chemically treated before you cut into them.

Use a hammer or two to pull the pallet apart. Be mindful of old rusty nails!

Here's the hardest part of the build: cutting out the tail feathers. We made 30 degree cuts to the pallet boards to create a fence picket sort of appearance. This way, all the pieces fit together nicely and we don't have to worry about curved cuts.

The tail feathers consist of two layers, a back layer of five boards and a front layer of 4 boards. You can stagger their display so that each board is visible and it gives the illusion of a curved tail feather.

Screw everything together from the back so that it's sturdy, and now the fun part begins!

Think about how a bowling pin is shaped and then cut it out of another one of the pallet's boards. To give the turkey some depth, you're also going to want to put a board or two between the body and the tail feathers when screwing it in.

Create a triangle using leftover boards to prop up the turkey's body. You don't know what kind of weather the turkey will have to brave this time of year, so give it a strong support to stay upright.

Stain the turkey's body with an orange color to help it stand out a little more and then add some facial features. We used some old buttons for eyes, ribbon for the wattle, and a spare piece of triangular pallet wood for the nose.

Place your turkey in your front yard to show it off to all your neighbors. You'll become the envy of your neighborhood!