Use A Pool Noodle To Create A Cozy Winter Wonderland Centerpiece

One of the best parts about any winter holiday is the gathering of loved ones around the table to share a meal and make memories. If you're hosting, then you know that creating a festive, cozy mood is key to making guests feel welcome, warm, and in the holiday spirit. A decorative seasonal tablescape helps to do exactly that. The table's centerpiece is the pièce de résistance, as it anchors the design of the table while also showing off your home's hygge holiday vibes.

Thankfully, you don't need to spend a fortune to get a centerpiece that packs a punch. In fact, @littlepettittpad shared on TikTok how they essentially treated an elongated pool noodle loop as a floral foam foundation for a beautiful DIY seasonal table centerpiece. By elevating the pool noodle on overturned wine glasses and then covering the foam loop with an assortment of decorative winter accents — evergreen boughs, white florals, clusters of ornaments, and candles — the TikTok creator crafted a lovely centerpiece with some serious wow factor.

Why a pool noodle? Well, when you break down said noodle to its simplest form, it's just a flexible foam tube, not unlike a dry floral foam or styrofoam foundation typically used for arrangements. The difference is that a pool noodle is only a few bucks at most, if you don't already have one collecting dust in your garage. You'll ideally want one that is similar to the color of your arrangement, so it blends in better. Now, grab your favorite floral or greenery picks, three stemmed wine glasses, and three battery-operated pillar candles, and let's craft a cozy winter wonderland centerpiece that'll dazzle your holiday visitors.

To create your own pool noodle winter wonderland centerpiece, begin by filling three wine glasses with an assortment of small ornaments or baubles, like on the TikTok, or swap them out for other festive items, like pinecones, a single large white flower, natural winter greenery, mini-trees, or even a battery-operated candle. Carefully invert the wine glasses so that the vessel portion becomes a clear cloche for your festive items below, while the stem becomes a post for the pool noodle and the base for an eventual platform for a candle.

Bend the pool noodle in half and zip-tie the loose ends together to form an elongated loop. Slide the loop over the base of the wine glasses so that the noodle circles all three stems, one stem on each end and one in the middle to fully support the entire length of folded noodle. Squeeze the rounded, closed side of the loop together and zip-tie it to keep both sides of the noodle tight to the stems like on TikTok. For a smaller centerpiece, trim the pool noodle to double the desired width before folding it in half and zip-tying. You may need to reduce to two wine glasses for a small centerpiece or even one glass for a mini table accent. 

Regardless of the final size you decide to create, the wine glasses and double-sided pool noodle foam loop form the elevated base for your floral centerpiece. Now comes the fun part: decorating!

To get a similar winter wonderland aesthetic to the TikTok creation, cover the top gap between noodles with a bed of flocked evergreen (under the bases of the wine glasses), securing each in place by piercing the stem into your pool noodle. Next, string an assortment of round ornaments in various sizes and colors onto a pipe cleaner to form a cluster. Place the grouping on the top of one side of the foam loop, taking care not to cover the wine glass platform, and secure the two ends of the pipe cleaner into the noodle to hold it in place. Repeat this process so there are three clusters spanning each side of the centerpiece. To cover the bottom of the noodle, fill in with additional sprigs of flocked evergreen and large white winter flowers until it's no longer visible. Nestle three battery-operated pillar candles in between the two rows of ornament clusters, and you're finished making a gorgeous winter centerpiece for your seasonal table.

If the baubles and flowers aren't your taste, you could use a similar setup but change up the look to suit your aesthetic. For example, you could keep it simple by just using green evergreen boughs and perhaps pinecones for a more rustic, all-natural centerpiece. Or lean into the festive holiday spirit and cover the entire noodle in red Christmas poinsettias, or blue hydrangeas for Hanukkah. And if the setup simply feels too formal with the wine glass legs, you could skip them altogether and just zip-tie the pool noodle directly around the pillar candles for a lower, more casual vibe.

No matter how you style it, a pool noodle makes a perfect foam foundation for a gorgeous DIY floral centerpiece to anchor your seasonal tablescape.