Wine Glass, Candle Holder, Whatever...

Ok, so I saw this trick in Everyday with Rachel Ray and I just loved it and thought it was such a clever way to throw together a fun table setting....again, here I am with the theme of make it shine, but don't make it expensive. The Rachel Ray article spun it as a way to make use of mismatched stemware- and there were tons of different kinds of wine glasses in the picture, and I thought, "wait a sec, something's wrong here, I mean, I've broken my fair share of wine glasses in my day, but not enough to have like 10 different kinds of mismatched wine glasses laying around." So then I thought, "well, they don't have to be mismatched, couldn't they all be sort of the same, and at the very least, just whatever I have in my cabinets?" The answer is "Yes!" And here is the finished product. The great thing about this idea is that you only have to buy a few flowers to make this so gorgeous- rather than a full centerpiece worth of them.

So just find a couple different styles of wine glasses- whatever you have on hand, position some of them right-side-up and some upside-down, and throw a few large-faced flowers under some of the upside down wine glasses, and arrange pillar candles as you like inside the right-side-up ones, and on the bottoms of the upside-down ones! Voila! Easy as pie, and very striking! You can really use any type of flower or other plant in this type of centerpiece- for Christmas dinner my very creative mom opted for holly that was growing near-by and evergreen sprigs and we used those where you see the Gerbera daisies here.

For an added touch of color, I found these giant leaves at Nashville's Import Flowers (this place is amazing, by the way), and laid them in a fanned-out sort of arrangement to serve as the base of my centerpiece. These leaves would also be great as place mats at an outdoor shower or other party! Have fun with this one!