Finding My Center, One Piece at a Time: Jackpot!

Finding My Center, One Piece at a Time: Jackpot!

January 14th, 2010 @ 12:02 pm by Mrs. Nachos
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On Christmas Day I was chatting with my future mother-in-law, Kathy, and she asked me what current wedding projects I was working on. I told her that I’m planning on making centerpieces for our home party and still needed to get a few supplies for them. OK, all the supplies minus the teardrop crystals I bought. I told her about my vision which she also had read about in my blog. She paused, looked at me, and said, “I may have something in the basement that you can use.”

Sweet.

I followed her down there (it’s still so weird being in their basement because it’s identical to my parents’, just full of different things), and after a little digging, she pulled THIS out!!!

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Leftover supplies from Mr. Nachos’ brother’s wedding. Well if that didn’t look promising enough, I opened her up, and…

Finding My Center, One Piece at a Time: Jackpot! : wedding decor reception 22 2

Jackpot! Exactly what I needed to add one more piece to our centerpiece puzzle. Inside the bin there were 41 votive holders…

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Including 24 of these…

Finding My Center, One Piece at a Time: Jackpot! : wedding decor reception 41 4

13 of these…

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And 4 of these…

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There are also 2 boxes of these…

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And to top it all off, in the wedding bin of happiness there was a bag of these…

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There were probably about 2 dozen of them that we can use to decorate the cake table and give as little goodies. Now I have to figure out what to put in them.

There were also a bunch of bags of heart and wedding bell confetti!

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But alas, we are not allowed to use confetti on the tables because the restaurant says it’s too messy to clean up.

There were a few of these that we could also scatter on the cake table…

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And to help us out, since the votive holders are a little waxy, she threw in a bottle of this…

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I’ve heard that throwing the votive holders in the microwave for a few seconds can soften the wax and make it easy to wipe off, so I may try that first. Has anyone else tried that before?

All-in-all, my Christmas Day wedding supply surprise (say that 10 times fast) was a big hit. Only a few more pieces to go until our centerpiece puzzle is complete!

Tags: decor, reception |

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43 Responses to “Finding My Center, One Piece at a Time: Jackpot!”

1 2 3 Last

Member

Miss Spaghetti (message) 282 posts, Helper bee

That’s awesome!!! Such a relief I bet!

1/14/10 @ 12:05 pm (reply)

Member

Ms. Library (message) 1,251 posts, Bumble bee

Let me know how the wax removal goes. I have to do that with some I just bought.

1/14/10 @ 12:06 pm (reply)

Member

Jesso (message) 277 posts, Helper bee

not sure how well it will work with your votive holders, but i always put mine in the freezer for a while (usually a couple days since i forget about them lol) but old melted candles pop right out with a butterknife. (i also do this with store-bought candles in glass containers…then i reuse the containers for pens/pencils/whatever!)

1/14/10 @ 12:08 pm (reply)

Guest

Cute stuff- can’t wait to see what you do with all these goodies!

Quick tip I learned from a friend- if you put the votive holders in your freezer upside down for a few hours, the wax will pop right out- might be easier even than using the wax remover!

1/14/10 @ 12:09 pm (reply)

Member

KMSull (message) 6,442 posts, Bee Keeper

Wow, that’s an awesome find! But HEY about the microwaving the votive holders- be really, really, really careful, because the glass might not be microwave safe and could potentially shatter/explode. Nobody likes that.

1/14/10 @ 12:09 pm (reply)

Guest

Meghan

Awesome! I bought used candlesticks (from Mrs. Star!) and to get off any residual wax, I just soaked them in a sink filled with hot, soapy water before wiping them down. Worked like a charm, and it was easy to do in quantity.

1/14/10 @ 12:09 pm (reply)

Member

eholden (message) 257 posts, Helper bee

I bought a bunch of used votive holders. I froze mine and then the big chunks practically fell off. Then I just scraped on the drops of wax a little and they just popped off too!

1/14/10 @ 12:10 pm (reply)

Member

mander411 (message) 735 posts, Busy bee

in my good ol waitressing days we just filled the votives up with hot hot water, dumped that out, and wiped away the wax that was stuck on it. And they were so clean after! Thats an awesome basement find!

1/14/10 @ 12:13 pm (reply)

Member

asunw (message) 550 posts, Busy bee

my FI uses a candle warmer to melt all the wax and clean them all the time, it seems the microwave would do the same thing.

1/14/10 @ 12:16 pm (reply)

10.

Bee

Miss Spaniel (message) 6,792 posts, Bee Keeper

How convenient!

1/14/10 @ 12:18 pm (reply)

11.

Member

lolo7835 (message) 558 posts, Busy bee

I agree with the freezer method (I saw it on Martha, so it must be true! :P) Apparently the wax shrinks up in the freezer, and will just pop out. Just don’t put a hot candle in it right after you take it out of the freezer like my brother did, it’s not pretty.

1/14/10 @ 12:26 pm (reply)

12.

Bee

Miss Cheeseburger (message) 1,020 posts, Bumble bee

how sweet of her to think of this!! and score on not having to buy everything yourself! YAY!

1/14/10 @ 12:31 pm (reply)

13.

Bee

Mrs. Mouse (message) 5,844 posts, Bee Keeper

Wow, jackpot! I always use hot water to clean out waxy candle holders.

1/14/10 @ 12:37 pm (reply)

14.

Member

Headuh (message) 204 posts, Helper bee

Put the votives in the freezer! FI actually taught me this, and it works. The wax will come right out!

1/14/10 @ 12:51 pm (reply)

15.

Bee

Miss Pencils (message) 1,027 posts, Bumble bee

was about to suggest what headuh said- freezer will allow you to scrape it off all easy like

1/14/10 @ 1:01 pm (reply)

16.

Bee

Miss Cardigan (message) 8,645 posts, Bee Keeper

Sweet!! How thoughtful of her!

1/14/10 @ 1:02 pm (reply)

17.

Member

vintage2010 (message) 2,259 posts, Buzzing bee

I was just about to say the freezer. I used to work at a wedding venue and we stored our votive candles in the freezer. Then after the event we used a spoon to pop them out of the holder. For the more stubborn ones we ran them under warm water for a few seconds and that popped them out too.

1/14/10 @ 1:15 pm (reply)

18.

Member

redherring (message) 1,976 posts, Buzzing bee

I cannot prove causation, only correlation. But I tried doing the whole “microwave the candle holder” technique, and the next time I put a candle in that holder, the holder practically exploded. Which was awesome, having a lit candle in a giant pile of glass and wax. If I were you, I’d go with the freezer technique or the wax remover.

1/14/10 @ 1:21 pm (reply)

19.

Member

irmango (message) 192 posts, Blushing bee

i have found freezing the wax and popping them off the glass is a lot less messy.

1/14/10 @ 1:21 pm (reply)

20.