Double-Duty Decorating: Thanksgiving and Christmas

For a fall display that lasts through Thanksgiving, group small vegetables such as squash, miniature pumpkins, artichokes, tomatillos, small red cabbages, and Brussels sprouts onto a fall platter. Carve holes into varied veggies to serve as candleholders and vases.

For a fall-to-winter display, use hollowed out red and green peppers to hold white and red roses. Add in evergreens, carrot tops, and kohlrabi along with festive candles.

This centerpiece features a simple wreath placed on a glass cake stand, perfect for fall and winter. Find a clear glass lamp shade and place it facing up in the center of the wreath (on the cake plate) to hold a candle.

For fall to Thanksgiving, gently tuck dried flowers such as golden yarrow, brown wood roses, burgundy celosia, and grasses into the wreath. Then add a fall colored candle inside the glass shade.

For winter, remove the fall flowers, leaving the plain wreath intact. Insert small pieces of evergreens, white winterberries, green hops, red pepper berries, and frosted beads. Replace the candle with a red or white one.

Get creative. Experiment with real and dried greenery when creating your own unique centerpiece.

Use a pedestal urn in a distressed ivory color as the base of this project ? which can be used both outdoors and indoors.

For fall, arrange smaller fruit and veggies with autumn tones into an attractive grouping. This example uses pomegranates, golden beets, pumpkins, gourds, artificial grapes, red onion, apples, and bittersweet.

For winter, Christmas ornaments in sparkly jewel tones replace the veggies and flowers in the same pedestal urn.

Tucking in fragrant evergreens around the ornaments adds a warm touch to this seasonal display.

This fall candle arrangement is colorful and inexpensive. Simply layer dried corn, burgundy cockscomb celosia, pale-green dried hops, and brown oak leaves inside a wide cylinder vase. Then place a pillar candle in a narrower glass and center it.

Be sure to change the candle if it burns low to avoid letting the flame get close to the dried leaves and flowers.

To change your centerpiece into winter colors, simply replace the corn with frosted white luster gems. Replace the fall flowers with imitation red grapes, variegated privet, and white paper roses. Swap in a red candle and you've recreated your table!

Don't forget to change candles once they burn low enough to come close to the dried flowers and leaves.