A Great Idea For Your Christmas Mantel

With a new home there are some new and exciting ways I can decorate.

 I am finding that it is a little harder for me to come up with ideas this year. I attribute it to not being that familiar with my new home. Once I came up with a design plan I felt more comfortable moving forward.

In our previous home we had an unusually large mantel to decorate every year. Our mantel spanned the entire width of the room. It was 17ft long. Our new mantel is about a third of that, measuring 65in.

Since our new home’s family room is smaller with a smaller mantel I won’t be doing anything quite as elaborate as I did in our previous home.

The fireplace and the TV share the same wall so this is also something I have to keep in mind because visually your eye will be taking them in at the same time they need to marry well together.

This picture shows how they are connected, it was taken the day we moved in. The TV now resides on the wall and I have artwork over the mantel.

My inspiration picture for my mantel is elegant and simple……

As with all inspiration images I will do my own interpretation  of this beautiful image. I would love to have the large urns, but I don’t! 

Always remember you can tweak things and make it your own. When I look at images of rooms I always look with an open mind and I  never, ever think, “ I can never do that because I will never have those beautiful pieces or that beautiful home!” That is a defeatist attitude. 

Instead I look at it thinking about the colors, the textures, the composition and then I change it up to work with what I have and with my own home and most importantly within my own budget constraints. 

My tip for you is simple…….

Study good design, and what you love, and try to apply it to your room within your own environment, and within your own budget!!

GREAT IDEA:

Since our home is new I want to make sure I protect our mantel from any damage from the greenery I will be using. I use a faux pine greenery for my mantel and I also will add some live greenery that I can remove when it gets dry and somewhat dead looking. By combining the two I get the scent of the pine and it also makes the faux greenery look more real.

The faux greenery has wires that can damage the finish on my mantel so when I read about this next idea I pinned it so I could show my husband, and I want to share this with you because I think it is such a great idea.

via

A mantel nailing board. You take a 3/4in. piece of plywood the same size as your mantel. Add felt furniture glides under the board so it won’t scratch your mantel and this will be where you attach your greenery, stockings, etc. After Christmas is over you can store it with the garland still attached, if you have room or remove the garland and store the board. When Christmas rolls around next year, you are all set!

Today is Christmas mantel day at our home. My handy hubby will be cutting the piece of wood to fit our mantel and I will begin my decorating for this year. Our mantel is 8 in. deep and we found a board at Lowes that is  8in. deep and primed white so that will save us another step of having to paint the whole board.

I will show you the final results in an upcoming post, I promise!

Yesterday we did a fun, easy project.

Here is my inspiration picture for that project…….

Here is a picture of my hubby helping create the look I am going for…..

He is a very handy guy, plus he has patience and understands when I say, “ Move it just a smidge!” he knows just how far a smidge is!

Once I take some pictures of the final results I will do a blog post to show you the results. I am delighted in how it turned out. Simple and elegant!!!

I hope you are enjoying decking your halls as much as I am!!!!

Remember To Always…….