A Tiered Trio

Christmas is nearly upon us and The Colonel and I will have a full house this year.

Roll call: My Favorite-In-Laws, my younger sister, her husband, Yam, Spud and his girlfriend.

This year, instead of having a repeat of our Thanksgiving meal like we normally do, The Colonel and I have decided to make two delicious casseroles (one will be made with some leftover turkey from Thanksgiving that is currently in the freezer). We will make some delicious, vegetable, side dishes to serve alongside the casseroles.

My sister is bringing some dessert with her. I do not know what she plans to bring but I know it will be good. I will also supply a bit of dessert. Well, actually a friend of mine supplied the dessert. She made a huge batch of Whooppie Pies and gave me some. She said they freeze well, so they too are in my freezer.

I have the perfect tiered serving dish for the desserts (I did make that, with The Colonel's assistance).

A couple of years ago, I attended a high tea that was given by a friend. Libby had beautiful tiered serving plates for all of the finger sandwiches and desserts. She made them herself. She told me what making them entailed. All she used was three cheap/thrift shop plates, two glass candle sticks from a dollar store and strong adhesive. Libby no longer wanted to keep the tiered serving plates, so she gave me two of them.

The Colonel and I were in Walmart a few weeks ago and saw some low-priced, pretty, Christmassy plates. We decided to buy them so that we could make a tiered serving plate for our Christmas desserts. We also made a trip to the dollar store and bought two glass candlesticks. I already had the adhesive in my junk drawer.

Usually the top plate on a tiered serving dish is smaller than the one below it. I was unable to find a smaller plate that I liked, so the top two tiers of our serving plates would be equal in size.

I liked the plaid pattern of the bottom and middle plates. I wanted something different on top, so I chose the holly pattern.

The Colonel and I measured the plates to find their exact center and then we dry-fitted the candlesticks and drew faint pencil lines around their bases. When we had the plates marked we began gluing the candlesticks onto the plates.

This stage of the process had a couple of phases. We first glued the base of a candlestick to the bottom of the plates that would become the top and middle tiers. We let those dry overnight (overkill I know, but we got busy doing other things and did not get back to the project until the next day).

When we returned to the project, we flipped the plates over and then glued the top of the candlestick (which would become the bottom of the pedestal between the tiers) to the serving surface of the bottom and middle plates.

We were pleased with the final look of our tiered serving plates.

Now every time I find myself in a thrift shop or dollar store, I look at the plates and think about all of the different possibilities of mixing and matching patterns and sizes to create lovely tiered serving plates.