When I (this is the mom talking here) hosted a Thanksgiving feast a couple years ago, I wanted a really earthy but stunning centerpiece. Like so many of you, Fall is my ALL-TIME favorite season, so I wanted to do it right and make it feel sort of organic. I saw a beautiful image on Pinterest where varying heights of tree trunks (but maybe branches?) were on the center of a table, adorned with crystal candle votive holders, pine cones and moss. It was stunning, so I wanted to replicate it.

A quick look online made it quite clear that they’d be a fortune. So I went looking around the handful of local craft stores in my area. Michael’s was the last stop, and I was feeling a bit dejected, having had no success. On my way out, something caught my eye from the very bottom of an end-cap… gorgeous, slender white birch trunks (or maybe branches?) peered out at me from under a shelf! Halleluja! They were in a bundle of 3, maybe 4 pieces, about  1.5 feet long. Birch and Aspens are my absolute favorite favorite trees, so this was PERFECT! I had my wonderful husband cut them into varying heights, picked up a bunch of random, mismatched votive holders from Goodwill, some moss from Hobby Lobby, some burlap from Michael’s and some pine cones from a nearby park. I felt it needed a bit of color, so I swung this berry garland around the whole thing. Viola!

It’s pretty warm here, in AZ, so we can get away with eating al freso on Thanksgiving. Sometimes it’s even too hot to eat outside.

Tip: I live in the desert and so wood is sort of hard to come by. If you live in a wooded area, just drive around and look for something that would work! Or, ask someone you know who might access to some rustic, natural wood for a favor (maybe a landscaper).

We needed protection from the sun, so we had put up a big white canopy and strung these curtains from Ikea along the backside from pole to pole.