Dress Your Table: Use What You Have (Canning Jars)
Happy December 1st, Friends!
You probably read this post (Apple Pie in a Jar) and this post (Apple Charlottes) and this post (canning cherries), on cannning, so you know that I have a stash of canning jars.
Dressing up your table for the holidays is where you can let your style come through, but it doesn’t have to be expensive at all. In fact, I’m always giving the advice of looking around your house and finding something you already have to decorate with.
Don’t go out and buy something new every time you entertain!
My ideas for a simple yet elegant table:
1. Have fun.
2. Use a fun festive table cloth (green, gold, silver, gray, red)
3. Turn quart-sized jar upside down with pine cones inside.
4. Add a tea light on top.
5. Spruce the table up with Dollar Store beads and extra pine cones.
With a table like this, you don’t even need a centerpiece. Use 2 or 3 canning jars and you’re set!
Remember the goal of entertaining is to not make people strain, looking around a huge centerpiece. You don’t want to hinder conversation, you want to encourage it!
What’s your quick and easy “go to” Christmas centerpiece?
Hello and welcome to my home and table!
I’m Sandy—lover of food, family, cooking, THE BIG BOARD, travel, and bringing people together. Through great recipes and connection around the table, we become better, stronger, and more courageous people. Feasting on Life is real, and every time we do it, we grow a little more. Read more...
I don’t can, but I use big Mason jars for storing stock, so I always have some on hand. Love them for parties! Fill them with candies, candy canes, potpourri … anything! Yours are so cute.
You are so clever! I love it.
I like thsi idea! since I don’t have any canning jars, I’m going to adjust this idea for my Christmas table using baby food jars – do you think anyone will notice? :)
My easy schmeazy “go to” Christmas centerpiece is a rustic wooden bowl filled with pinecones & small ornaments, flanked by 2 short fat pillar candles in wooden holders. I keep my dining room table simple with no tablecloth – just enjoying the beauty of the old oak table, with a woven red & green tablerunner. I don’t have to buy a thing other than replacement candles when needed.
Another favorite idea for Christmas for something simple & fun is to fill a bunch of different types & heights of clear footed bowls or glasses with different kinds of red & green candy and then stick a tealight in each one.
What a nice idea! Thank you.
What an awesome, quick, cheap, easy idea. We change it up every year at our big Christmas do, someone in the family gets to choose the main colour (this year is purple…. go figure) and then the ideas start happening….. Love this one, thanks for sharing.
Aside from candles…I love my collection of cake plates…I put jars of fresh rosemary on the cake plates and they look like little Christmas trees. Sometimes I tie little jingle bells to them with bakers twine. Free {since I grow the rosemary} and festive! Love your canning jars…what would we do without them!
Small clear plastic boxes with a set of ornaments inside. Find them to match your color scheme, wrap a bow around it – and taa daa! How easy is that? p.s. I’ve seen these ornament sets at Target!
You have the best ideas~ ALWAYS!!
Very good ideas as always Sandy. We scour garage sales all year long looking for new and inventive things to use for centerpieces. Right now we have a lotus bowl, $1.00 from a garage sale last year with antique Christmas bulbs surrounding a pillar candle. and flanking this on either side are a pair of silver, yes REAL silver candle sticks that we got at a garage sale for $5.00 for the pair. (they were asking $20.00, but I stood my ground and they sold them to me for $5 !!!). So you can have a beautiful table scape and not break the bank. We had a Open House / Family Reunion for my wife’s side of the family the Saturday after Thanksgiving….. note to self not such a good idea, too much work! Anyhoo, I was amazed at the comments about our home and the Christmas decorations that we put up, yes my wife made me help her put up ALL of the Christmas decorations on Black Friday, lets just say I would have rather been shopping. We started at 9 am on Friday and finished at 2 am on Saturday morning…. lets just say my wife loves to decorate every room and leave it at that. But all of our stuff is bought on the frugal side of the budget. Stuff from the dollar store, from garage sales etc. You just put it together and it is beautiful… So you do not have to go out and spend a lot of money to make your home Merry and Bright for the holiday season!!!
Blessings to you and yours, and get decorating!!!
Curtis & Sherrie
PS- I am glad that it is all done though!!
Love this idea! It certainly goes with our more natural look this season, along with the “use what you have” push, rather than buying new.
What a clever idea!!! I have plenty of jars because I didn’t can anything this year. There are so many great ideas you could use….decorative balls, small trees. I would love to try etching the jars and placing tealights inside. I need to get better with centerpieces.
Really love this look! I’ve always liked mixing rustic with glittery. The contrast is extraordinary. Thanks for the ideas.
Love this idea and I’ll use it in the future!
I’m copying the idea of putting epsom salt and a candle in decorated mason jars that are lined up on my kitchen sink.
Sandy, thank you.
I love this look of rustic elegance. The pine cones are the perfect woodsy touch. Feels like such an accomplishment when you use what you have on hand. My future daughter-inlaw will be using blue Ball canning jars for the wedding next Fall I’ll be sure to pass this on to her! So nicely done, Sandy.
GREAT idea! So cute and elegant at the same time.
I have a crystal bowl with a “B” etched in script, which was a gift to us a few years back. This year I filled it with pine cones and small red, green and gold ornaments which I got for really cheap when Michaels was having a sale a few weeks back. Last year it was garland, pine cones and ornaments which had lost their caps/hooks, so they were unusable on the tree. Simple, but effective (I think so, anyway!).
Those are really cute, Sandy. They’d be great with vintage mason jars as well.
You totally rock! Look how cute those are! My go to centerpiece is a vase of flowers- they have beautiful ones here and for the most part, the prices are reasonable.
So cute! I’m using the canning jars as a centerpiece for our Christmas candlelight on Thursday evening! Just so much fun!
I would not have thought to turn them upside down. Cute!
I love to dress up my glass cake stand as a centerpiece.