Centerpiece

One last reunion related post and then I promise I'll be done talking about our 20 year celebration and the many busy months that preceded it. I just have to share one more thing--the centerpieces I made for the tables on Saturday night. My friend Charla had the idea of putting pictures of our high school teachers on table tents to spark conversations about our school years. Since I'd scanned the pictures of our classmates and then sent them to Charla for nametags, I decided I'd go ahead and start scanning pictures of teachers too. As I looked for yearbook pictures of our teachers, I decided there were lots of other memory-jogging pictures from yearbooks and from my personal collection that would be fun to put on the centerpieces as well. I just started scanning pictures left and right before I was even sure what I was doing with them.

I started Googling centerpiece images trying to get ideas, and somewhere along the way I read a description of an easy centerpiece that used a large mason jar for the base, which I knew we happened to have in our cupboard. For several days I scoured the Internets and channeled my inner Martha Stupid to try and come up with something easy and creative. I tried putting the pictures into a collage and then printing them out and placing them on the inside of the jar, but making the collage was like putting together a puzzle and took forever. Even though the end result looked okay, I would have still had to figure out something to put in the jars, since I'm pretty sure the fire marshal wouldn't approve of a candle surrounded by paper.

Finally, after about three days of searching for ideas, I saw this centerpiece on Etsy that gave me an idea. I started cutting out all the pictures I'd scanned and printed, and I went to Michael's and picked up some different ribbons in our school colors. I tied some elastic around the top of each jar and then tied 5 to 6 pictures to the elastic with tiny little ribbons. I finished each jar with a big bow around the top and a tea light candle inside. Here are a couple of shots so you can see what they look like.




To be honest, I was a little unsure about how they would look on the tables, but people really seemed to like them! I got tons of compliments and people really enjoyed looking at all the pictures. One classmate who does some wedding planning said she might even steal the idea, so I think that means they were a hit!