Family Centerpiece

We had some 20 people to dinner the other night, many of whom had not seen each other since the 1960s. It was a reunion for David’s side of the family and a pretty important one too. Naturally I wanted to make the house look its best and maybe that’s also why home décor has been so much on my mind this past week: I was anticipating this one great night.Yesterday I talked here about using a cut-up bottle to make a hanging planter and mentioned that for this task you need to get your hands on a bottle-cutting kit of some kind, a device from the 70s that I was pretty sure had come and gone like the Pet Rock. So Imagine my surprise when the very first Google search I did turned up this beauty here.To cut the bottle you scratch a faint line all around the circumference using the little blade that comes with the kit. Then you insert a kind of sturdy metal implement inside and go clink clink clink all along this hairline fracture and the next thing you know the bottle cleaves in two. It’s like magic! The top parts you can use for the many things but I think you’ll agree that the bottoms cry out to be made into….. drinking glasses! You just have to sand the dickens out of the jagged break line so blood doesn’t trickle down into your beverage when you lift the thing to your mouth, but hey that’s easy to do too.I think they’re adorable though I didn’t bring any of them out to add character to last night’s reunion table. For last night’s reunion centerpiece I bought four little vases for 99¢ apiece and filled them with a couple of wildflowers snipped from the neighbor’s flowerbed that abuts our driveway (thank you Fontana family!)Also the blossoms from two three-dollar houseplants scored at the discount store.These I interspersed with some favorite fake pumpkins collected over the years, three real gourds, ivy from the side of our house and dried cranberries scattered about for the people who like to eat a centerpiece. Here's another of those nice fake pumpkins now, this one ceramic -  and a guest brought the flowers, and the candle is from last Christmas :Then, when the sun went down and the reunion dinner was about to commence I nestled a couple of lit candles down among all these objects.... 

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 And what a night it was for my husband’s side of the family. What a night of new beginnings for us all!