thrifting through the weekends

Better Homes & Gardens

Over the summer I spent a couple of weekends thrifting with my mom at our fave vintage spots. She had a flipping genius idea. But let me lead up to that...

The venue for our event has two HUGE stone fireplaces each with a 15 foot wood mantle. Originally, I wanted to buy a crazy ton of white pillar candles varying in height and dimension and fill the length of each mantle. It would be stunning! I started pricing the pillar candles that I have in mind. Suuuuuper expensive. Well, not individually of course, the smaller ones were around $4 - $10, but the large one's were $15 - $40. $40 for one candle? I think not. Plus, I wanted boatloads of them. Boatloads. To be fair, I could wait for sales after Christmas, and stock pile at that time. But my after Christmas schedule is nutso this year, with another move across the country from Rhode Island to Tucson, two weeks worth of residency interviews (scary!) and my rotation in the emergency department at the Tucson VA. Ahhhh!

Martha

So. My mom's fab solution? Crystal/glass candlesticks! Tapered candles are affordable - we bought a box of 18 for $3.50, and another box of 10 for $1 (thanks to rad coupons from Michael's and JoAnna's) so now we just needed to start collecting candlesticks. We collected about 25 in one weekend, and paid anywhere from $.17 to $.75 each! Oh - and they are so lovely...they sparkle and gleam and will look so pretty up in the lodge!

How come I've never seen this done before? This is such a perfect idea. Good thinking Mom.

*note: I took oodles and oodles of pictures of these prizes on the mantle at my parents house and it looks so great! But my camera busted, again, for the last time, and I am unable to access my pictures. Very unfortunate. I'm buying a new one tonight - as there are sprouts of RED LEAVES on the trees and I have to capture this transformation!