If you're playing host for Thanksgiving dinner, chances are your mind is awhirl with drumsticks and desserts or, more realistically, on how to get your floors vacuumed and toilets cleaned before the doorbell rings.

        Often, the table centerpiece becomes the turkey — an easy and short-lived way out that leaves your table looking like a bone yard by the end of the meal.

        This year, we took matters into our own hands and asked four experts to design dining room table centerpieces. To each we assigned a budget of either $25, $50, $75 or $100.

        • $100: Keith Mueller of Flowers and Beyond, 1408 Main St., downtown, turned artichokes into candle holders and worked in other fall textures of fresh wheat and curly willow vine with pyracantha berries, orange unique roses, peach lilies, hydrangea, Yoko Ono mums, heather and stock.

        • $75: Darlene Ackemyer of Woodlands, 1004 Delta Ave., Mount Lookout Square, chose dried cockscomb, Chinese lantern, dock and dogwood branches and put them in an antique brass container with a mini-garland of dried flowers.

        • $50: Nyla Kramer of Nyla's Flowers, 8880 Cincinnati-Dayton Road in Old West Chester, used a crackled container with persimmon candles, yellow and black magic roses, lilies, butterscotch and burgundy pomps, red daisies and seeded eucalyptus.

        • $25: Barbara Henry of Plants of Wolfangel, 8181 Beechmont Ave., Anderson Township, carved out a pumpkin and used fresh mums, alstroemerias,fall leaves, ivy and tree ferns. For candle holders, she glued three small gourds atop each other, carved out the top for the candle and added leaves.

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