I wanted to document the decorating of our fireplace mantle, or chimneypiece, if you'd prefer, but I very unfortunately left my camera at my parents' house over Thanksgiving, so I decided to use my phone instead. The pictures are pretty bad, but after our apartment is finished getting Christmased I plan to do a little Christmas tour of home with my good camera. For now, these little snapshots should give you a pretty good idea of what I've been working on.
I cleared off the Thanksgiving mantel and got to work using the mirror that hangs in our entryway.
Initially I thought I'd use the teal oval mirror over the mantle. The mirror makes me laugh because it reminds me of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, which happens to be the first movie Aaron and I ever saw together. I think the frame of the mirror looks like the robot. However, I didn't really want to have a Merry Metropolis themed mantel, but I did want to use a mirror.
I remembered that we had a nice rectangular mirror with a lovely decoration on the top in our bedroom, and I took it apart from the dresser it's attached to and tried it on the mantel instead of Metropolis. It is pretty tall, but I like it. More rustic-inspired. I also added an old Christmas banner my mom gave me underneath the shelf along with some $.99 "mercury glass" votives from Target.
I have a lot of inspiration files saved on my Pinterest, and I have always loved greenery at Christmastime. I knew I wanted to use lots of different shades of greens with a few pops of red, so I set out to Home Depot to get some garland swag. Fortunately, I found 20' of swag for $10. What a bargain. I used a wirecutter to break apart the garland (after this picture was taken, which is why the right side of the mantle looks like the Grinch's arm is hanging from it) and used the remaining feet of garland on top of our TV cabinet. I like the look of the votives in the greenery, but out of concern for, you know, burning down the apartment, I moved them for now. I am looking into getting taller mercury glass candlesticks to put up.
Here's another thought I had, although it's a little different from the green scheme. These three candles from Target were clearanced because they were melted on one side. I snatched them, because they're candles and will probably melt anyway, and decided to play around with them on the mantle. I like the red, but I think I'd need at least three more on the other side to balance out the look, so I'm going to keep looking for mercury glass or other accents.
I was trying to gauge how big of a wreath I wanted to make to hang from the top of the mirror, and I found the Nebraska Cornhuskers magnet Aaron had on his car at one point. I thought it might be a good way to test scale, and it made me laugh when I set it up with all of the Christmas decorations. I think it is going to stay on the mantel through the weekend as we play the Sooners this weekend for the Big XII Championship. I also started the first fire of the season last night (thanks to three DuraFlames). It was a lovely, chilly night in Tally, and it really felt like Christmas!
If our mantel looks like it's missing something, it's because these babies are on their way from my mom's sewing machine in Texas. She finished our stockings this weekend and is mailing them to me. I am excited to have a set of stockings of our own, and I think actually hanging them with the greenery will help me stick with my original scheme of greens. And that gold wreath in the window? That idea comes from Erika at Urban Grace Interiors HGTV photoshoot using metallics. I absolutely loved Erika's idea, and I knew my mom had two wreaths that had seen better days that were headed to the trash. I saved them, and my sister, dad and I spraypainted them gold. So fun!
Stay tuned to see how the mantel continues to transform!
