What did you think of Joanna’s holiday tablescape yesterday? Personally, I love the festive simplicity of it. The holidays always come with so much bling and sparkle, sometimes it’s nice to embrace a palette cleanser and tone things down, ya know? I think there’s so much beauty in that. Today, I am sharing a foraged evergreen centerpiece tutorial that’s so simple and easy to recreate. With Joanna’s Scandinavian woodland Christmas theme in mind, I knew the primary goal was to have our centerpiece be a little reflection of the forest. After all, here in the PNW, that isn’t hard to achieve! In fact, all of the greenery we used was foraged, except for the juniper.

I can’t believe Thanksgiving is just over a week away. How are you preparing? When I’m creating flower arrangements in the fall, I really enjoy incorporating the beauty of the rich golds and browns and the crispy textures of dried foliage and florals in my designs. I used to balk at dried botanicals as I mentally categorized them with bowls of potpourri and lace doilies (all of which have great potential in the right context). But now, each autumn I’m more and more inspired by the beauty they exhibit and I think they can actually be used to create a very modern Thanksgiving centerpiece!

BTW, I’ll be hosting a wreath workshop on December 3rd at OOLA Distillery in Capitol Hill. If you live in the Seattle area, we’d love for you to join us. We’ll be making wreaths from blue spruce, cypress and juniper to create a unique, fragrant beauty to adorn your home for the holidays, all while sipping on hand crafted hot toddies featuring OOLA spirits. Click here for more details and tickets.

One of Joanna’s favorite ways to celebrate the holidays is by throwing a small, intimate dinner party. She’ll be sharing the overall styling of the table tomorrow, but today it’s all about the flowers! This year the aesthetic of our holiday centerpiece is a spin on traditional luxe vibes, but still with a modern twist. I viewed it as a fun challenge to make something using colors and materials that are just a little bit unexpected. While this luxe holiday centerpiece does feature some traditional Christmas-y elements like evergreens, I added some surprising elements. Pomegranates provide a nice, traditional pop of red, but in a new way. Then bringing in privet berries added another color and texture element. Using roses always brings a classic feel, and in the case of this arrangement, it just felt perfect.

I’ll admit, when Joanna asked for “no pinks” in this year’s Thanksgiving arrangement, I was a little disappointed. I LOVE autumn pinks and use them ubiquitously this time of year. Our Thanksgiving centerpiece and tablescape last year is a great example of how you can use pink to decorate for this holiday. However, as is usually the case when I’m pushed outside my comfort zone a little, I had so much fun not using pinks in this arrangement. Instead we embraced golden-yellows, shades of ivory, and some pretty dried tidbits like dried baptisia pods and dried branches. It was really fun to mix together traditional fall flowers (like the mums) with unexpected elements — and all in a modern vase!

The more I work with all sorts of flora, the more I love the entire life span of the ingredients I work with, including their death phase. In autumn, plants begin to die, producing seed pods and dried crunchy leaves. The texture alone is dreamy. I also love how the colors of the foliage shift and change as it begins to dry. In this low, dramatic Halloween centerpiece arrangement, I combine these dried floral elements with freshly bloomed dahlias to create an effect that reminds us all of the circle of life and how these seed pods will result in new flowers next year… plus, it is the perfect way to bring a floral element into your next Halloween-themed gathering!