Frugal-er Cranberry Christmas Centerpieces

I had the sheer excitement of cooking breakfast for 40 college kids yesterday. Boy – is that fun. Because, not only are they super grateful for food they didn’t have to cook themselves in a hotpot, but they’ll eat it – wether it’s good or not. And they eat it so fast, if it were bad, they wouldn’t remember. 🙂  It’s the ultimate confidence booster for a cook, for sure.

I didn’t have much time to set up a nice table display like I wanted – they were pretty much hovering around the table of food like kids around the birthday girl at present-opening time.

I did manage to put together a little centerpiece though for my strawberry muffin platter….and it was pretty inexpensive too, because of a little trick I learned somewhere online – and, actually, believe-it-or-not, it wasn’t pinterest.

It starts with something as simple as a paper towel roll (or a toilet paper roll). And a little bit of paper – scrap works fine. You’re gonna stuff your paper towel roll with it so nothing falls inside!

Then you’ll need a few other things: A glass jar or vase, one bag of cranberries, and your paper towel roll.

Go ahead and cut that roll down to the size of your vase – so it comes right to the top – and put it in your vase.

Now you have a cheap-o piece of cardboard taking up all that space…instead of an extra bag of cranberries! (Or whatever other filler you’re using.)

I didn’t even use a whole bag to fill up this vase!

At this point, the possibilities are endless! If you stuffed your roll with paper, then you could put a few cranberries on top, then put a votive candle on top of that! Or you could put together a pretty little flower arrangement.

And no one will ever know you have a big paper towel roll in there! 🙂

Here’s a couple of other arrangement ideas I saw online that this idea could work for – and you can make them with less of your expensive filler – but they’d still look just as beautiful!

You could use all sorts of things in your vases – jelly beans at Easter, Christmas M&M’s for a kids party…

Think of the money this could save for an entire wedding reception!

Happy Christmas Decorating!