Powder Room Essentials For Your Turkey Day Celebration

Today's post is a quick public service announcement and a reminder to all the Turkey Day Host's and Hostesses out there...When you are out gathering your Thanksgiving Day supplies this weekend, don't forget about the Powder Room! The Powder Room is the busiest rooms during our holiday celebrations and it doesn't take a lot to make it special for our guests. Just a few items to make it look extra welcoming and smell fresh and pretty. 

I got a head start on my shopping this week to avoid lines this weekend. My Powder Room is all set and now we can enjoy it for the entire week. 

 I'm a busy girl this time of year, to keep dressing up the Powder Room quick and easy, I've narrowed it down to three essential items...A scented candle, a stack of brand new, fluffy towels and the main element...a gorgeous fresh floral arrangement delivered right to my front door (from the FTD Thanksgiving Collection). 

Using these three items I created a festive, visually pleasing and wonderfully scented vignette in my powder room shelves (Potterybarn). I found the most perfect, inexpensive orange towels from the Better Homes and Gardens Collection at Walmart. 

In an effort not to compete with the scents of turkey and apple pie, I chose a simple, lightly scented vanilla candle from the grocery store candle aisle.  

The fresh floral arrangement from FTD topped it all off and added an amazing dose of color and scent to the space that we can enjoy for many days!

Thanks for stopping by!

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving Day celebration filled with family, friends and food (and pretty powder rooms)!

For information on my affordable online design service, please click here.

* This is not a sponsored post, however, I received flowers from FTD to help facilitate this post.

How To Make An Impressive Indoor Centerpiece Using Outdoor Decor

Few things make me happier than coming home to a beautiful fresh floral arrangement. Whether it's a bouquet from my hubby, a vase filled with flowers I picked up while at the supermarket or just a simple bunch of fresh clippings from the yard. A fresh floral arrangement brings life and energy to the home and makes any space feel special. 

My favorite place to display fresh flowers is in our dining room. It's the first space you see upon entering the foyer. This week, I created what has to be my favorite fresh floral centerpiece ever for our dining room table. It started with a pair of Outdoor Covered Pillar Candleholders (Pawn Covered Pillar Candleholders from Bombay. I used one large and small. They are sold separately and available at Kolhs). 

These gorgeous candle holders are actually intended for outdoor use, but when I saw them I immediately pictured them inside on our table.  Merchandise that is intended for outdoor use is usually large in scale. When brought inside, pieces like this make a big statement. Especially in a small space like my dining room. They look really cool all on their own, but I decided to use them as vases to create an inexpensive, but quite impressive fresh floral centerpiece. The tops are removable and the inside where the candle is supposed to go can easily be used as a vessel.

I grabbed two bouquets of flowers from the supermarket and a package of wet foam. 

I cut the foam in half, wet it and stuck one half in each statue. 

Then, I trimmed the flowers down and stuck them in the foam one at a time. I made sure they were evenly spaced and coming out at all different angles. 

After placing the flowers in the vase, there were large gaps and empty areas that needed filling. I grabbed my hedge clippers and headed outside to the front yard. I clipped a few stems from my hydrangea and brought them inside.

I used the hydrangea to fill in the areas that looked bare. Then, using a few extra long stems, I gave the arrangements a little height by sticking them in the top. I stuck a few curved stems in the bottom for a cascading effect. 

The round statue tops look really cool sitting on the table next to the arrangement and create a cool vignette style centerpiece. 

Once the flowers die, I can either refresh the arrangement with a new pack of grocery store flowers and more yard clippings, or use them as candle holders, or simply leave the statues empty.  

Either way, I have a large, eye-catching centerpiece that anchors the dining room table. 

The Pawn Candle Holders were designed in Michigan and distributed by a Michigan based family business which has been based here for over 50 years. Since I am smitten with the mitten, it really makes me happy to know they were designed and distributed locally. Here is a link where these candleholders and other Bombay outdoor furnishings and accessories are available at Kohls. 

*I'm now available for new online design projects! Please click here for more info.

*I received the Pawn Candleholders free of charge to facilitate this post.

High Impact, 5 Minute Fall Centerpiece In a Tote~Tutorial

Now that things have settled down (a little) I'm excited to share some of the fun "projects" I've been working on. To start, I spent a weekend in Davisburg, Michigan for The Makers and Doers Festival (formally called A Weekend In The Country).  I held a series of live workshops, including one dedicated to creating simple, budget friendly, fall centerpieces.  Each centerpiece was made of produce/flowers from the grocery store, clippings from the yard and things most of us already have laying around the house. 

Photo courtesy of Maceday Photography 

My "Five Minute Fall Centerpiece-in-a-Tote", was the most popular among the attendees. It's very easy to put together and makes a big statement.  Especially if you make two.  Using grocery store flowers and a basket or tote you already have around the house makes it inexpensive enough that even making a pair is still easy on the wallet. Since it was such a hit at the festival, I thought I'd share the tutorial here as well.  

Photo courtesy of Maceday Photography

What you will need:

-A small, inexpensive vase

-An attractive storage tote or basket (my striped storage tote came from Hobby Lobby)

 -A dinner plate 

-A large bouquet (or two small bouquets) of grocery store flowers 

-Curly willow branches or branches from your backyard

-A handful of plastic grocery bags

The simple steps:

1. The first step is to place the dinner plate in the bottom of the basket or tote.  This provides a nice sturdy, level base for the centerpiece and will also catch any incidental water drips.

2.  Next, fill your vase with water (and any vitamins included in your flower bouquet).  Then place inside the tote, resting it on top of the dinner plate.  

3. To help keep the vase from tipping over and to keep the tote looking full and plump, plastic grocery bags tucked in around the vase will do the trick. 

4. The next step is to add your flowers.  I simply unwrap the flowers, trim them to the height of my vase and set them into the vase.  If you would like to take the bouquet and re-arrange the flowers, you could, but most of the time I find it's not necessary.  Sometimes, if the bouquet is on the small side I will use two bouquets.   

5.  The last step is to add a little height to the arrangement.  I used curly willow branches that I found in my grocery store floral dept.  These can be used over and over again.  If you can't find curly willow branches at your grocery store, branches from a tree or bush in your backyard could work also.  

What makes this arrangement such a high impact element is the size and height of the arrangement, the eye-catching, black and white stripes and the interesting texture of the canvas tote.  If you don't have a canvas tote, you could use woven basket (like I did with this centerpiece).  Baskets are also a great way to create an eye-catching piece, and most of us have one available. 

Taking advantage of the grocery store floral department is a convenient and budget friendly way to incorporate fresh flowers in your home. Whether your entertaining, decorating for the seasons or just need a little visual pick-me-up.  Last year, I made a large fall centerpiece using a similar approach with flowers from the front yard (click here for details).  

Better get back to the design studio.  Thanks for stopping by!

For information on my affordable online design service please click here.

All photos credit to Sarah Macklem of The Yellow Cape Cod, unless otherwise marked.