Green Up Your Holiday Table

When you're preparing to entertain, why buy a floral arrangement for your dining table when you can create a centerpiece with elements from your own garden or existing craft supplies?  Even if you live in a very cold climate, you can reuse what's around you rather than buying new things.  Here are a few ideas:

• Make an arrangement of holly from your garden - the red and green are very cheery.
• Make a "Thankful" arrangement.  Take a beautiful, short bare branch that has broken from a tree in your yard and place it in a nice vase.  During Thanksgiving, have your children make Thanksgiving ornaments shaped like turkeys and hang them from the branches.  Have them write on each one something they are thankful for.  These ornaments are easy to make.  Take orange or brown construction paper, trace your child's hand in pencil, cut it out, cut a hole at the top of the middle finger and thread a string through (the thumb is the head and the fingers are feathers).  Then decorate them with crayon, glitter glue or construction paper "feathers."  You could do the same thing for the December holidays, but with construction paper Christmas Trees,  Snowmen, Menorahs, etc.
  
• If you have a chandelier over your table, make a "family" arrangement with double-sided printouts of photos of every family member, hung on pretty string from the chandelier at different levels.
  
• Decorate with a "cornucopia" centerpiece that you'll later cook up and eat.  You don't actually need a wicker cornucopia.  You can just decorate the center of table with seasonal fruits, nuts and vegetables in nice bowls.  Make sure they're washed in case someone takes a bite!

Use your imagination.  There are tons of ways to cheerfully decorate without creating more waste or spending more money!