Simple Coffee Filter Peonies and Smoked Apple Pie

I’m linking up with the Dare To D-I-Y link party.  This week’s theme is “Dare to Entertain”.   I’ll get to my entertaining themed project in a sec.  

Last Wednesday was Thanksgiving Eve, I host turkey day every year.  Every year there is some kind of fiasco.  This year we had the kitchen smoked out from a bubbling apple pie.  Who knew you had to put the pie dish on top of a baking sheet to prevent the juices splattering all over your oven?  Not this girl.  This picture was not taken out of focus.  My house was engulfed in a smoke cloud.  Notice that Max has been getting the decoration bug.  He added his red toy car to the shelving vignette.

This was not done single-handedly.   There’s my mom trying to look innocent.

I had accomplices.  A few of them.  Max’s quad is pulled up to the scene of the crime like a fire rescue vehicle.  My little helper.

Here’s a nice shot of my husband’s butt 😛 Yes I stood back and snapped photos of this event.  I had to document it.  The smoke alarm going off seems to be a yearly tradition.

The pie turned out great though.  People were impressed.  We kept our secret (unless my guests check my blog).

Okay.  I had to get that story off of my chest.  

Since I cram everyone at one really long table Whoville style, I put the food out in a buffet to save precious space.

The table I use for the buffet is 60″ square (pretty big)  so I place the food all around so the flow of turkey traffic moves around the table.   This leaves the center of the table looking bare and unfestive.  I use all white serve ware so I thought a simple white centerpiece would look clean and crisp.  

What’s a more classic centerpiece than a bunch of full flowers?  I wanted a modern twist so I made them.  Paper flowers seem to be all over the blogosphere.  So I made my favorite flowers.  Peonies.  A blogger that loves peonies…groundbreaking hahaha!  They really are my favorite flower.  Here’s my wedding bouquet:

See.  Obsessed.  They’re full and fluffy.  Perfection.

I attempted to recreate these puffers from stuff I found in my cabinet.  These would look cute on any table I think.

I didn’t set up a fancy and elaborate tablescape for this, but here’s a tutorial for you and you can email me your fabulous table.  I whipped these up in 10 minutes flat from start to finish a whole dozen. Each peony was made out of 4 coffee filters and a pipe cleaner.  These are embarrassingly easy to create.

Start with 4 coffee filters.

Crumple them to give them more texture.

Kind of smooth them out back into circles.

Pinch the center of one and fluff it out a little.

Take another filter and place it under the first one and pinch the center then fluff the “petals” as well.

Repeat this to the other two remaining coffee filters.  The pinched side should look something like this.

Wrap wire, pipe cleaner or floral wire around the pinched side.

Fluff and arrange petals until you’re happy with the way it looks.

Easy peasy.

Make a bunch, throw on a cute apron, snap a shameless bathroom selfie and enjoy entertaining 🙂

Click here to see some amazing entertaining ideas for the holiday season.  It’s a link party, so link up, pin some great ideas, and recreate your favorites 🙂