Tuscan Centerpieces

Here is part two of my Dinner Under the Stars dinner! 

I used inspiration off of Pinterest and had references from a fabulous lady, who had done a Tuscan themed party for her husbands 60th birthday party. 

I am VERY happy with how they turned out and they were really quite simple to make. 

To start I went to Home Depot (or any hardware store really) and purchased a whole lot of terra cotta pots in varying sizes and the clear plastic plant liners- they are about two inches tall and I bought 4" ones for my 6" pots because I wanted to put them inside so I wouldn't lose moisture from the hole in the bottom*. 

* That hole drove me bonkers! I couldn't find pots with out them, even at the craft stores, and I even tried to plug them with clay but it was a no go - I finally found the plastic liners to be the best option. 

 AND I used water gems - they are pretty amazing! 

They retain the water - which worked great for my shallow liners and for transportation. 

Anyhoo, on to my actual centerpieces... I started by lining all of the pots up on our table.

 Then I put the liners in each one and about a cup of water beads - a bit more in the larger pots.

Then I started to add my flowers. I did it in layers, my base being sunflowers and moving onto greens, calla lillies, daisies, etc. I tried to stay in the warm colors given the theme. I might want to mention that I ordered the flowers at Trader Joes for a few years so I had an idea of how many of each. 

BUT I WOULD RECOMMEND DOING A TEST RUN FIRST - Buy some flower that you like or would like to use and use your pot [or vase] and fill up. Then count the flowers used and multiply by how many you will have. 

I ended up making almost 35 flower pots in different sizes so I used a huge quantity of flowers. 

After a few hours and lots of trimming stems they were full! There was no rhyme or reason to my placement - I just put them where I thought they would look pretty. 

The touch that made these centerpieces so special was that each one had fruits or vegetables on kabob skewers (found at the grocery store)

 As you can see I used:

 lemons

baby artichokes

baby bell peppers

mini zucchini

garlic

I also filled mini terra cotta pots with fresh veggies to place around the yard and on the bar.

I know this is ALOT of foliage and veggies - but NONE of it was wasted! The centerpieces went home with a few guests and the fruits and veggies were taken too and eaten the following day :)

Once I had all of my prep done it was time to box it up and transport it!

Then place on the tables with the Wine Bottle Numbers from my previous post.

Once the candles were lit and the table tents placed [I made those too] we were good to go!

The event was really hard work but I thoroughly enjoyed myself, it was great to be able to use my skills and really put my abilities to the test!