I guess you must be wondering what a Kallah's (bride's) chair and a chandelier have in common in order to share the title of this blog entry? Well the answer is artificial roses! Now let me just start by saying that once upon a time I surely would have turned my nose up at the idea of artificial flowers of almost any sort, but now I've come to appreciate them for what they are. I'm not going to run and fill vases full of plastic flowers to decorate my home, but they can be used in some very interesting and beautiful ways that would be difficult with real flowers and you have the added bonus of being able to enjoy your creations for as long as you choose! And I found these quite realistic looking white roses and peonies at the dollar store for a dollar a stem, so I bought them all.
The purpose of my purchase was to decorate a special chair for a Kallah friend of mine. It just so turned out that Shavuos fell right before the wedding and so I grabbed those flowers and quickly used them to decorate the chandelier hanging over our dining room table. I simply layed the stems of the flowers across the arms of the chandelier, and they nicely complemented the small strings of apples that have been hanging there since a Bar Mitzvah celebration a year ago. The result was beautiful and very fitting for the Shavuos holiday.
The morning after Shavuos/Shabbos was over, I quickly took the above picture and then took down the roses for their next mission. Using the ladder back chair in the picture above, a hula hoop (to make a raised back) and about five white table clothes I created the chair for the Kallah. Whew! the chair looked great in the wedding hall, and for a "carpet" leading up to it I quickly taped a long piece of lavender disposable table cloth material to the floor! (At this point guests had actually started to arrive so I was just a bit embarrassed to be down there on the floor, but that's the life of a creative woman!) Sounds a bit funny but it actually looked beautiful. Oh, and I didn't have the standard rose petals to scatter on the "carpet" so I cut petal shapes from some shiny lavender and aqua ribbons that I had used to decorate the mechitza and that did the trick. After the wedding I brought the chair home to use for the Sheva Brachas at my home the next night, and I'm still enjoying looking at it days later.
Before signing off, I'd just like to offer some advice regarding dining room chandeliers.Go for something with multiple arms that you can use as a base for a myriad of decorations. Every birthday I drape the chandelier with colorful ribbons, on Chanukah I hang dreidels from the chandelier, one Tu B'Shevat I hung pinecones, just to name a few ideas. It gives such a festive feeling with very little effort —instant decorating at it's best.
