Rotating Candle Plate Decor

We got these candle plates as a wedding gift, I think:

We had purple candles and black pebbles on them for awhile, but I got sick of trying to clean the dust off the pebbles. And we lit the candles and used them until they kind of melted onto the pebbles. I'm beginning to think that, if you want lit candles on your candle plates, you shouldn't have pebbles at the bottom. Unless you think it's fun to pick candle wax off pebbles. Those are my feelings on the matter.

So anyways, those plates have been just sitting there for years. I mentally decided to get some pretty candles and pebbles, and then just NOT light the candles. But I kept putting it off.

And then it hit me - I could use these candle plates to decorate for holidays! I LOVE decorating for holidays. A whole lot. So I put a plan into action for Halloween, the first holiday after we got back from China.

I found these beautiful black candles at Porters - they have shiny gold flecks in them and a really cool texture. Then I bought some purple ribbon to go around them, and I decided to sacrifice my spider earrings for the purposes of decor. (I only wore them once a year, anyways.) And the earrings, puncturing the candles, held the ribbon perfectly in place:

I saw these little styrofoam glitter balls at Porter's and just knew I had to use them as my "pebbles":

And here's the finished result:

So cute, huh? So when November rolled around, I decided to make my display all Thanksgiving-ey:

I found similar styrofoam-type balls to use, and then they had these metallic leaf pieces in the jewelery section at Porter's. Again, I just punctured the candles to keep the ribbon in place:

I felt like the brown on the candle didn't really mesh well with the brown on the styrofoam balls. I might go in search of different candles next year. And I ended up changing the ribbon, but forgot to take a picture of it. I got a thick orange ribbon to put behind an off-white ribbon layered in front of it that says, in brown lettering, "Grateful" on it, over and over. I liked that a lot better. But I still really want to get different candles next year. Less waxy and more chocolatey looking.

I forgot to take pictures of my Christmas decor. It was adorable. Lime green glitterey styrofoam balls, brown candles again, lime green ribbon, and a rusty brown metallic snowflake on each one. So cute. I'll snap a picture of it this next Christmas, I promise.

I really wanted to do a New Year's Eve theme, but ran out of time and money. I have these adorable white styrofoam balls that look like little hail stones that I want to use when I do it this next year, though. And maybe some light blue candles? Silver ribbon? So it's all winter-ey. We'll see when we get there.

This is what I did for Valentine's Day:

(Yes, the location of our little display table has changed. More on that later. There is a good reason for it, and it looks just as good under our big mirror.)

I found those adorable heart clothespins and Easter grass-type stuff in V-day colors at Michael's. I grabbed a light pink ribbon and red candles to go with it, and voila:

And here is my current display for St. Patty's day:

That's a thick lime green ribbon behind and a white ribbon with shamrocks layered on top. I got the glittery shamrocks for the front in the flower section - they were at the tips of flower-type wire. I just clipped the wire off and hot glued those suckers onto my ribbon. They had these adorable shamrock-shaped pebbles for the base:

They were running low on those pebbles, though. I bought all they had left, and I felt like the base was a little skimpy.

Dylan came up with an idea to help with the skimpiness - Irish pot-o-gold style gold coins interspersed among the shamrocks:

Do you think it's too much? I need your opinion. Should I stick with straight shamrock pebbles - just kind of sparse - or is the addition of gold coins a good thing??