Woodland Centerpieces for Thanksgiving

I won’t be spending Thanksgiving with my friend C and her family this year, and I will miss her and well, truth be told, I’ll also miss her flowers. I have shown you her amazing floral arrangements before. Always gorgeous and modern. So, as I’m prepping for Thanksgiving here at our house with friends this year, I’m remember a few little tricks that C has taught me (and that I’ve just kind of picked up along the way). I thought it would be fun to share.

 

I purchased a bouquet from our local marke, nothing extravagant…a few roses and some green berry, rosehip type sprigs. I used a short, wide-mouthed glass vase- pictured above. You can pick these up at thrift stores for next to nothing. (I used to be afraid of vases with large openings, thinking it would take a lot of flowers to fill them, but it really doesn’t.) Fill it with cold water and dump at least a packet of the flower-fresh powder they give you with these bouquets, more if you have it (don’t be stingy with it). De-leaf all the flower stems. Using a sharp kitchen steak knife, trim each stem down so that the flower will only come to the top of the vase (really tear off that stem with the knife, to expose plenty of the stem to water, no clean cuts necessary). Do this will all the flowers first, placing them to distribute their color nicely. Like this…

Now work on the green, leafy foliage, cutting down of the stem and dispersing its color. Keep the entire arrangement close and tight to the opening of the vase, with no space showing.

You could leave it like this and it would look great. Or you could wrap any large leaves on the inside of the vase to disguise the stems, which is my C taught me to do. But my favorite part of this arrangement comes next.

I have a couple sheets of bark (I got these from C, but you can purchase them online). These sheets can be cut pretty easily with a good pair of scissors and I only needed to cut it to the height I wanted (and the best part is I have some leftover for another project!)
And there you have our woodland-y, non-Thanksgiving, and yet Thanksgiving, centerpiece.
Hope you all have a fantastic Thanksgiving day (or Thursday if Thanksgiving’s not your thing). I will be preparing the whole soup-to-nuts feast and am looking forward to it (happy to say I haven’t ruined a turkey yet, she says as she knocks on a sheet of bark). Be well! xo