50th Anniversary Centerpieces

Planning a 50th Anniversary party is nerve-wracking!

You want everything to be perfect to celebrate 

such an awesome occasion...  

And you 2nd guess yourself every step of the way.

ARGH.

It's such a huge responsibility and I don't want to screw it up.

Know what I mean?

My house looks like an anniversary store exploded.

Even the bathroom:

I was attempting to steam out the wrinkles in my MIL wedding dress and veil.
FYI...  Didn't work.  :P

There's not a single room downstairs that has escaped the mess.

When I'm in the middle of something like this, 

I'm not a big one to clean up when I'm done for the day, 

only to drag everything back out again.

It just sits.

Scott LOVES it!

;)

Last week, I ventured out to three of my favorite places:

1)  Thrift Store

2)  Hobby Lobby

3)  The Dollar Tree

Goal?

Narrow down exactly what I was going to do for the centerpieces.

6 weeks and counting until the big day.

GAH!

And I've changed my mind about a bazillion times!

The invitations are completed, so my next biggest hurdle 

was how in the world I was going to decorate.

Since I've always loved the chalk painted glass look, 

I decided to see if I could score some vases 

from our local Goodwill to paint.

After attempting to find matching vases at two different stores, 

I decided that being short on time, it would be impossible 

unless I went to every thrift store in a 30 mile radius.

Not gonna happen.

So, what do you do to trick the eye into believing 

all 20 vases are the same?

Paint them all the same color.

It works for picture frames and it actually works for vases too.

:)

At $1.00 a piece 

{after asking nicely why all the prices were different 

when they were all the same size}, 

I cleaned out the Goodwill.

Next I went to Hobby Lobby and grabbed 7 yards of gold Poly-Satin.

Since I had plenty of cream fabric and other odds and ends at home, 

I figured I'd try to throw something together 

using what I already had.

It took 3 solid days of hard thinking 

and one epic fail to finally get it right.

At least the vase painting part was a cinch.

This is what I came up with:

One down...

19 more to go.

I think I'm actually going to divide all the letters between Mom and Dad 

when they wrote to each other while he was in boot camp 

and use them as part of the centerpieces.

I think they look so pretty tied with ribbon.

But then again, I'm a sucker for old love letters.

:)

{Which by the way, I promised I wouldn't read.  ;) }

Total cost per centerpiece:  $ 3.00

The satin was nominal with a 40% coupon, 

the candles came from Dollar Tree, and the vases were $1.00.

The rest I had on hand.

Awesome!

I love it when things work out that way!

Don't you?

Tutorial coming soon!