Christmas Candy Platter for my Mother-in-Law

I met my husband in August of 2004, and have been going to his family's home for Christmas nearly every year since then.  As soon as we walk in the door, we inevitably find ourselves in the kitchen, where my Mother-in-Law gestures to a giant platter of homemade caramels, peanut clusters, and other goodies, and says "I made too much candy this year."  Every year for 14 Christmases she's said this, and yet every year she makes the same boatload of candy!  While she gives much of it away to family in town, there's always still a ton of it left when we arrive, and more shows up when her sisters drop off the candy THEY made to share.  After the 5th or 6th year that she said she'd made too much, I started teasing her that she *always* says that, and still always makes a ton of candy.  She just shrugs and says, "Well, yeah..."  So for this year I made a special Christmas candy platter just for her. 

The plate I started with is a plain white Corelle platter that I picked up at Macy's, about 12" wide x 10" tall.  I think the hardest part of the whole project may have been just finding a plain platter without designs, or bumps, or flourishes anywhere.  I had tried all over town, and even amazon, before bumping into this one while Christmas shopping for other people.  I used a dark red vinyl and a green glitter vinyl, and cut all the pieces on my Silhouette.  I used a tutorial on the Silhouette School Blog to do the lettering for a curved surface, but the ovals created in the software were a bit pointy, whereas my platter was more of a rounded rectangle, meaning that the text was too tightly curved to be applied exactly as cut.  I ended up marking the center points, then cutting & applying the words individually, just eyeballing it to keep it straight.  One word is slightly crooked, but all in all I'm thrilled with how cute it turned out.  I gave it to her on Christmas Eve, so she'd be able to have it out on Christmas day when the rest of the family was over.