When it comes to the holidays and entertaining, we all want our home to be festive, warm and welcoming. But time and patience are limited. While you might not have time to make that 2-foot-long centerpiece you saw on Pinterest with the taper candles, fresh evergreens, and vintage Christmas baubles, if you’ve got ten minutes, I can help you make something beautiful and elegant with things you already have in your home.
Get It On the Table In Ten!
I love having a beautiful centerpiece on my table for the holidays. There are always so many great ideas out there. I think I have enough centerpiece ideas pinned on Pinterest to last me for several lifetimes of Christmases.
Some years, I have the time and energy for something elaborate and Martha Stewart-esque. Sometimes, I’ve got ten minutes and a handful of leftover crafting materials to work with.
I thought it would be fun to challenge myself to see what I could come up with using only things I had around the house, without dragging out a ton of crafting supplies.
The criteria I used to come up with these centerpieces are:
- anyone can make them; zero crafting skills needed
- they need to be fast, as in no waiting for glue or paint to dry
- no huge mess involved
- they need to be made using items most of us have around the house, especially during the holidays.
Finally, it had to be something beautiful that you would want to put on your table. Think Pottery Barn, not Pauline’s Country Craft Barn.
(I apologize if there is actually a Pauline somewhere out there with a country craft barn. I’m sure your creations are lovely.)
Starting With the Basics
All three of these centerpieces begin with the same base: a serving tray or platter of some sort and mismatched glassware.
The Tray
Any tray will do. I have a couple of tarnished silver trays lying around, so I grabbed one of those. A ceramic or stoneware serving platter would also work, as would a tea tray, a dinner plate, a charger, or even a pretty ceramic pie dish. It just needs to be round/oblong and hold your glasses.
The Glasses
Most of us have a collection of mismatched wine glasses floating around our cabinets from years of breaking one here and there, so I figured that was a good place to start. Bonus points if all three are of varying heights, but it’s not a huge deal if they aren’t. No wine glasses? How about those old sherbert glasses of your grandmother’s? Three champagne coupes from your bar? Different sizes of mason jars. Get creative and do a little digging in your glassware.
Centerpiece #1 – Snow Globes
For this centerpiece, we’re going to use the glasses to create small “snow globe” scenes. Start by tying bows around the stems of the wine glasses. (If you have stems.) You can use gift wrap ribbon, curling ribbon or dig around in your craft bin for something.
To create the snow, fill each glass a quarter of the way with Epsom salt, table salt, or kosher salt for your snow.
Now, go hit up your Christmas ornaments and decorations. We’re looking for small items that will fit in the wine glasses. Yup, you can pull stuff right off the tree if you need to.
Do you have leftover Christmas crafting supplies? Dig through those and see what you can come up with.
I used two deer Christmas ornaments (I pulled their little hangers out), some mini bottle brush Christmas trees I had left over from a craft a few years ago and some “berries” I cut off from a decorative wreath pick that was floating around in one of my boxes of Christmas decorations. Simple yet beautiful.
The idea is to find a few things that look somewhat cohesive together. Fake flowers or holly sprigs. Small Christmas ornaments. Tiny knick-knacks. Do you have a collection of Christmas pins? Put one in each wine glass. Even something as simple as twigs of fresh rosemary or evergreens. Arrange them in your snow. Add a votive candle to the middle of your tray if you have one. (Be mindful of your bows!)
You could add more Epsom or table salt to the tray to really up the snow factor!
Centerpiece #2
For this one, we’re going to use our base of snow and ribbons again.
You’ll need three battery-operated tealights or votive lights and some greenery. The small button-battery fairy lights would work as well.
For your greenery, use fresh or fake; it doesn’t matter. We aren’t using real candles here; we’re just creating a little ambiance.
Some great sources for greenery:
- Did you trim branches off your Christmas tree while setting it up? Grab those!
- How about evergreens in your yard?
- Do you grow rosemary?
- Decorative wreath picks
- Fake evergreen candle rings, napkin rings, or garland
Place your greens into the wine glasses, nestling them down into the snow. Then place your tealight or votive in the center of the greens. Adjust them as necessary, so they encircle the tealight. Your candle will glow through the branches of your greenery. Simply lovely!
Centerpiece #3
We’re heading to the kitchen for this one. No base of fake snow is needed here. We will be using battery-operated tealights or votive candles again. If you happen to have the votive candles in clear jars, you can use those, as I did, for a real flame.
Grab that bag of cranberries out of the fridge. You know, the one you bought because you were going to make homemade cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving. (Who were we kidding? Everyone loves the weird canned cranberry jelly, anyway.)
Also, snag those clementines that are hanging out in your crisper drawer. They’ve been there for a week now; if the kids were going to eat them, they would already be gone.
Depending on your candles, you’re either going to put your candle into the wine glass first and then add cranberries around it up to the rim of the candle holder, or put your cranberries in first and then gently nestle your tealight down among them.
Now arrange the clementines around the base of the wine glasses. If you want to get really fancy and make Martha proud, poke a few cinnamon sticks in among them.
If you don’t have fresh cranberries, give craisins or almonds a try. You could use apples or navel oranges around the base.
There are so many creative ways to put together a lovely holiday centerpiece for your table with this basic setup. Just use what you have on hand.
- Add a handful of vintage Christmas lightbulbs to your wineglasses.
- Fill them with colorful Christmas candies, such as M&Ms or Hershey’s Kisses.
- Drop in several small Christmas baubles on top of your fake snow.
- Use wire fairy lights if you don’t have tealights.
With a little imagination and some poking around in your Christmas decorations and cupboards, you’ll have a memorable centerpiece in no time.
