Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Holiday Centerpieces

Last year, on my birthday to be exact, our Relief Society had its annual Holiday Dinner, with a twist.  Our R.S. President didn't want to have it too close to Christmas, so she wanted us to combine Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's into one big party.  Lucky me, I got to come up with the centerpieces.  Initially, I was so excited!  What's more fun than decorating for a bunch of ladies?  But as the days wore on, I was coming up short.  Six tables, two for each holiday. The theme was "Holiday Traditions."  It took me a while, but I finally pulled it off.
For Thanksgiving, I used a leaf wreath with a cake plate in the center.  On the cake plate was a cornucopia filled with fall flowers, and on each side was a cute little turkey candle holder.
The second Thanksgiving table was all about baking for the holidays.  Rolling pin, mini cookie cutters, potato masher, and a ceramic pie were sprinkled with cinnamon sticks and cloves.  It smelled so good!  I added some height with a cookie tin under the cloth.
My family always decorates for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving, so of course, I had to use some of my favorite decorations for a Christmas table.  This one got a lot of "oohs and ahhhs."  There is just something so classic and festive about red and gold.
The other Christmas table holds a small portion of my mom's Nutcracker collection.  Every year for as long as I can remember, my mom has received at least one nutcracker for Christmas.  She finally had to tell us NO MORE!  because she ran out of room to store them all!
New Year's was the hardest one to come up with.  There is the traditional champagne, I mean sparking cider (this is an LDS get together.  We aren't big drinkers ;) ), but what to do for the second table?
I thought, what do we do each year to kill the time before midnight?
Of course!  Play games.
So I rounded up some classics and topped it with a fun timer that I received as a gift when I was in the second grade....a long, Long, LONG time ago.
To jazz it up a little more, I spelt out festive words with the Scrabble tiles.
On a side note, is it weird that I have no idea how to play Scrabble?  This game sat around our house for 20+ years and I have never seen it opened until this event!

So what about you?  Do you have fun Holiday traditions?  How will you adorn you tables in the coming Holiday Season?  I'd love to hear what you have up your sleeve! 

4 comments:

  1. Glad I'm not the only one thinking about Christmas already! Would you share this here?

    http://oneartmama.blogspot.com/2011/10/csh-thursday-link-party.html

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  2. Great ideas here I love how you can easily adapt the idea to any ocassion- thanks for sharing.
    Visiting from TT&J
    Lowri
    http://papervinenz.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wonderful ideas! I think I'll choose the red christmas balls centerpiece as it was simple yet elegant. thanks for sharing.

    Regards,
    Prasad
    Christmas table decorations

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  4. Nice post! The first and third Christmas table decorations are my bet, I love the elements you included on them. Thanks for the inspiration.

    ReplyDelete