$4 Christmas Centerpiece

You may have noticed that lately I've developed a love of using real wood in decorating.  I like the naturalness of it, the color, the texture, and that it makes a nice statement for little to no cost.

This is one of seven centerpieces that I put together to use at a church Christmas dinner.  The cost per centerpiece was only $4, and $2 of that was for the round place mat.

I started with seven slices from a log that were about 2 1/2" thick.  (My Dad was so great and cut them for me, using a chainsaw, on Thanksgiving Day while I was there visiting.) 

The candles are from a dollar store, are battery powered, and are made with real vanilla scented wax.  The candles have little tester buttons on them so you can see how they work before you buy them.  I taped down the tester button so I didn't have to spend money on batteries for just one dinner.  They stayed 'lit' on the little cell batteries through the whole dinner.  (I forgot to take the plastic cover off of the candle for the picture and I also added a jute bow around the candle.) 

I bought round place mats in red and green for $2 each, 2 packages of red ornaments from a dollar store, and $5 for the pine garland.  (I would have preferred real pine, but on a budget the faux pine had to do and will allow us to use the centerpieces again.)

The cute little pine cones are from my grandparents pine trees.  They were packed with thousands of these perfect little cones, it was like I was in pine cone heaven. :)

Since the pine cones came straight from the trees, I didn't want to chance bringing in little spiders and bugs so I followed Alison's directions over at House of Hepworths on how to kill the critters in pine cones and it worked great, I haven't seen any since.  I actually saw some teeny tiny bugs and spiders crawling out of the pine cones so I highly recommend baking them before use so you don't have any uninvited guests at dinner, can you imagine?  Not good!

I hope you are able to enjoy this time with your family and friends and in case you don't hear from me again in the next few days--

Happy Holidays!

Today's Fabulous Finds...How to Kill the Critters in Pine Cones and $4 Centerpieces