Between traveling during St. Patrick’s Day and the holiday often being close to or overlapping with Easter, I often don’t get a chance to do much for the Irish holiday. I’ve usually setup our bar and served a festive drink like Pinch Me Punch or Guinness floats, but I realized I’d never had the chance to do a festive tablescape!

This St. Paddy’s Day weekend, my hubby is out of town at a guys weekend, so I thought it would be the perfect chance to host some gal pals for the night! Every year I try and host a little something fun for us as a girl’s night in. You might remember the Chick Flick Movie Night from last year. When thinking about a theme this year, I got inspired by a combination of the Marie Kondo “Tyding Up” frenzy and a Galentine’s Clothes Swap hosted by my friend Mara of Unforgettable Events MPLS.

I don’t know about you, but my friend group has been on a cleaning rampage this Winter. While I know I was ready to shed some of these goodies, I thought, how fun would it be to do a Trash to Treasure theme and have people trade home decor and accessories?! And, Mara had the brilliant idea to donate anything that wasn’t claimed at her clothes swap, so I am definitely stealing that idea!

I’ll be sharing more about the swap soon, but to start, I'm sharing the tablescape I put together for the dinner portion of the evening complete with a super simple idea for DIY napkin rings.

Diy Napkin Rings

What You Need

• Plain Napkin Rings

• Plastic Gold Coins

• Hot Glue Gun

The supply list for this DIY is so simple! I love festive napkin rings, but sometimes they can get to be so expensive. It’s been awhile since I made my own napkin rings, but I loved the moss bunny ones I made for Easter last year and the firework ones I made for 4th of July a few years back. Usually with just a few supplies, you can make something fabulous for a fraction of the cost of buying brand new napkin rings and it usually impresses your guests.

Thrift stores, estate stales, and garage sales are treasure troves for napkin rings. I find a plain wood, plastic, or metal napkin ring works great. I recently snagged a set of 8 vintage wood napkin rings for $.99 at a local thrift shop and knew they’d be perfect for a project like this.

With the Trash to Treasure party theme, I wanted to incorporate elements of rainbow and the idea of a pot 'o gold. What better little detail to add then some gold coins? I bought some from Oriental Trading Company a few years ago to use in apothecary jars on my St. Patrick’s Day mantel, but you can often find these at Dollar Tree or a party store, too, for cheap. I just dug some of mine out to re-use for this project.

Warm up the hot glue gun and attach them! It honestly may have taken a little longer for the glue gun to heat up than the whole craft took to make! They looked great with white napkins!

Tablescape Tips

Along with this affordable and easy DIY, I wanted to share how I put together a festive dinner table on a budget!

Linens

The shamrock runner was a seasonal item a friend of mine was looking to get rid of last year and I snapped it up. Another reason I am so excited for this event is that while your friends might be getting tired of something they have, it’s brand new to me and so fun to use without spending any money! These kinds of items are also great to pick up on seasonal clearance from stores like Target as well and you can tuck them away for next year.

Speaking of Target, you can often get great placemats on clearance after each season as well. Although I must have missed these in stores, my local Goodwill gets Target clearance leftovers and puts them out the next season. I got a set of 8 BRAND NEW green placemats at $.99 cents a piece. Solid color placements with a little texture or placemats with holiday neutral patterns can be re-used for so many occasions. Plus, they are flat, so it’s something easy to store.

Plates, Chargers, & Placecards

Admittedly, it’s hard for me not to go crazy with dishware, but let’s be real, my 1950s house just doesn’t have the space to have a zillion sets of dishware. That being said, every now and I again it’s fun to get a set of plates that I can use in place of my everyday white dishware. Dollar Tree frequently has fun plates that are only $1 each and when I saw these green beauties, I had to have them! They were such a fun color and I can see them being reused for everything from summer patio parties to Christmas festivities.

Each place setting also has a super cute place card designed by Meghan of Elva M. Design. I can’t believe we’ve been collaborating for more than two years now. Our St. Patrick’s Day Blog Hop was already two years ago, but the ideas are just as good now as they were then! You got a little sneak peek of more of her designs for the party at the beginning of the post, too.

Glassware

I also picked up the green wine glasses at Dollar Tree. I mean, I just couldn’t resist. I also shopped the house and am using a set of glasses for water that I picked up recently from a pottery artist at a local market. It’s always fun to support local makers!

Centerpiece Idea

When my hubby was going to toss out this high school shop project a couple of years ago, I casually said, “I think I could use it, let’s not toss it yet.” I am so glad we did’t get rid of it! It’s come in hand so many times. I’ve used it as a base for a Kentucky Derby themed centerpiece, a Fall centerpiece, and for countless holiday tables I haven’t even blogged about!

For a St. Patrick’s Day inspired centerpiece, I added three Ikea plants to the box and popped in two rainbow flags from Bullseye’s Playground at Target. In addition to rainbow flags (that fit my theme best), they have Irish flags, too. The Ikea plants are so affordable and while I usually just have in my everyday decor around the house, they’ve also come in handy for parties like my Fixer Upper Viewing party.

Finally, I sprinkled more gold coins down the table runner and set a gold “lucky” metal sign in front of the box to finish off the look! The sign was a 90% off Target find last year and I’d totally forgotten about it until I opened up my St. Patrick’s Day storage bin. It was like finding my own pot o’ gold!

Stay tuned for more details of the Trash to Treasure Home Decor & Accessories Swap, coming soon!

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