Valentine's Mantle 2013

Last year I blogged about my Valentine's Day Mantle. I view it now as a good first attempt. However, a year later, I have a much more cohesive mantle.

It still has some of the same features of last year, the heart centerpiece, colored candles, and the red heart plate. However everything else is new and/or re-purposed. 

This is the left side of the mantle. The vase filled with colored balls is the focus. I purchased them from Lowe's on clearance for a dollar a piece. They consist of purple, pink, red and white balls and a couple of spirals. I think they are a fun addition. I also have the red, pink and white candles from last year. The "rock" that is painted pink and says kiss and the heart shaped box are both from the dollar tree. The lantern is there to just add some depth, but is empty.

On the right side of the mantle you can see the love decoration I recently highlighted. I also have two apothecary jars here. The tall one on the left is filled with a red and white Christmas garland. The one on the right is filled with red Styrofoam hearts covered in glitter and silver Styrofoam balls that I have used in other decorations. Finally it is finished off with a heart decoration and another dollar store box.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Love Decoration Tutorial

On Pinterest I have seen several Valentine's Day decorations with white backgrounds and colored decorations going from red to pink. I've seen it with the word love and with hearts. I happened to be walking through Michael's when I saw the word "Love" in the clearance bin. I immediately purchased three of them, and an appropriately sized canvas and hurried home to make decoration for my mantle. 

It is simple to make with a canvas, your selected decoration, paint, glue, and paint brushes. As you can see here I've got my canvas and love words. I already had the white spray paint, acrylic paint and paint brushes. The glue isn't shown, but it's just Elmer's glue. One of the things I really liked about having the whole word connected as opposed to the individual letters is it is much easier to get everything aligned.

I sprayed the canvas white just to give it a uniform look. Then I painted each of the love words a different color, one was red, one was peach and the second a mixture of a bright pink and some white to make it a little more muted. You can see how it turned out below as well as have a sneak peak of my entire Valentine's Day Mantle.

Halloween Mantle

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays to decorate for. I'm not sure why it is exactly, but I love the colors and the fun you can have with it. Now for me, Halloween is not simply an orange and black holiday--those are everyday colors since I am an Oregon State Beaver's Fan. So Halloween colors for me involve a combination of orange, black with purple and green. In celebration of October, this is my mantle from last year (please forgive the quality of the photography!)

Here you can see the right hand side of the mantle. On the end you can see a tombstone, a skull and a cat. All of these were purchased from either Target or the Dollar Tree. I was in search of a haunted house, but I didn't want to pay an arm and a leg for one. This one was the perfect compromise. It was a house, but since it was made out of paper it was very inexpensive. To make it stand out more I added green and orange tissue paper to the back. In this photo you can also see the green, orange, and purple sparkle candles. When I saw these candles at Michael's I knew I needed to make them mine. However I patiently waited until they were on sale before purchasing them. Finally you can see I have my smallest apothecary jar filled with candy corn. I have a love hate relationship with candy corn. I love the look of it, and I love to eat it...up to a point, and then I feel like it's just a big waxy tasting mess. I will admit that I ate more than my fair share of candy corn last year. The jar is not completely filled. I took a Solo cup and placed it in the middle so the candy corn is just around the outside. It still took a lot of candy, but not nearly as much as it could have. 

I have a major crush on this centerpiece. I think it is perfect for Halloween. It is all black and the feathers give it such great texture. For me it conjures up images of ravens and witches.

Finally you can see my witches hat, purchased from Lowe's, and an apothecary jar filled with colored ornaments. The larger balls are Christmas style ornaments and the smaller balls are Styrofoam balls covered in glitter. 

The ornament set on the right is the set I purchased from Hobby Lobby. It is perfect I can use the orange, green, purple and pink for Halloween. The red and green go well for Christmas. The green can also be used for St. Patrick's Day (and maybe the orange too). Red and blue for 4th of July. The blue for winter. It has really turned out to be very versatile. The small Styrofoam balls come in colors and a size that complement these ornaments well. 

The mantle isn't the only place I decorate for a holiday. I usually also do something for our guest bathroom, put out coordinated hand towels in the kitchen and make a napkin/centerpiece display. Below you can see some cute soap dispensers Joann's had last year. I couldn't pass up the candy corn one!

 Happy Haunting!

God Bless America Tutorial. Another Pinterest Success!

God Bless America Tutorial

Another pinterest copy! I saw the tutorial for this from pinterest and I new it would be a perfect addition to my red,white and blue summer mantle! Here is the finished product, I really like how it turned out. 

To make this I made a run to Jo-Ann Fabrics (Hobby lobby was closed because it was Sunday). It turned out to be great because everything I bought was on sale! The tutorial I was following used 12x12 canvas, but due to the size of the letters I had, I needed a slightly larger canvas.  So I bought an 11x14 canvas, a pack of letters, and the dual star. I already had white spray paint, acrylic paint, and glue. 

 This is what it looked like just laid out on the canvas with a coat of white. I wasn't a huge fan of the font, but it was the best they had and MUCH cheaper than buying the individual letters that I wanted. However, in the end I really liked the font. The "o" had to be altered, for some reason it just looked too much like a "q" so I gave it to DH to alter. He did a great job!

 So then I went to experiment with paint colors and this is what I had. I really like the look of the cerulean blue, but ultimately had to go with the more royal blue, cause it is more traditional.

Here is the final product on my mantel. If I were to do this again, I'd skip the all white step. The person who did the original tutorial was looking for the all white look and added the color as an afterthought. I, on the other hand, knew I was going to paint it, but just kept barreling down that path. Although by doing it the way I did, most of the sides of the letters and star are white, not colored. I'd also probably use spray paint--it is so much faster than paint brushes! 

Here is the whole mantle.

 A close up of the metal star and decoration.  

 Finally, here is are the apothecary jars. One is with the beans and the other filled with baseballs. The furthest one is still empty, only decorated with a bow, but the America heart covers most of it.

St. Patrick's Day

Below is my mantle for St. Patrick's Day. Like all of my mantles it will be a continual work in progress changing and growing every year. First this is the whole mantle. You can see that I have a shamrock "wreath"  hanging in the middle and candles and garlands for decoration.

This is a close-up of the candles.  One is just a plain white candle, the other two are covered in scrapbook paper. The middle one is kelly green with white shamrocks on it. The right one is green sparkly paper with a green glitter shamrock sticker on it. Note the gold ribbon and green and gold garland.

This next photo is a close up of the left hand side of the mantle. On the far left is a glass container filled with a white and green garland, then some white candles, one has a shamrock sticker and another has some gold ribbon around it. Finally, on the far right of the picture is a little pot of gold with some gold coins in it.

The other area that I decorate is on the other side of the living room. We have a small buffet table which houses our wedding photo and usually some decorative flowers. For St. Patrick's day I've got green and white carnations (dollar tree!) with some gold ribbon. 

Valentine's Day Mantle

This is my valentine's mantle. It is looking a little weak, but after the holiday I picked up some stuff so next year it should be MUCH better. 

Here is a close up of the plate, which I got at Target, and some of the candles. I cut out a heart from some construction paper to add a little pizaazz. The other white candle has some ribbon tied to it.

The other side of the mantle shown below has the candles on the candlestick; one white, one hot pink and one red. It also shows that I covered (rather poorly) one of the candles with some scrapbook paper. Actually, it's two pieces of paper, but it's hard to see here. The first one is pink with lots of little hearts. The second is a see through page with pink hearts which you can see. Since this was just a prototype and I didn't actually make the final version it is just held together with a purple rubber band. 

Finally here are a couple of shots of things I am kicking myself for NOT getting. This is really my MO, I take pictures of stuff and then sit on it. Well I sat on these for too long and now they are no where to be seen. Maybe Target will have them next year...

4th of July

Happy 4th of July everyone!

I hope you all have a fantastic day celebrating our independence. I am doubly celebrating because I have made my first thing off of pinterest! Remember how DH let me buy some apothecary jars? Well I finally copied some of the things I'd been seeing on pinterest (like this) and filled one of them up with red, white, and blue (ish) beans!

There it is in all it's glory. I filled it up with 4 pounds of great northern beans, 4 pounds of small red beans and 1.5 pounds of black beans. Who would have thought that it would take nearly 10 pounds of beans!  Well after filling it up DH asked me what I was going to do with the other jars. He quickly offered baseballs. I had been thinking of decorative balls similar to what makoodle did (see above). However his baseball idea was perfect and very 'us'. Remind me to tell you the impact baseball has had in our relationship!

Unfortunately we didn't have enough baseballs immediately, but I think we'll get some more. The additional baseballs and some ribbon to tie around the small spot will finish this off very nicely. Now I just need an idea on what to fill the 3rd jar up with!

Enjoy the 4th!

Easter decoration

Since posting my Christmas post went so well I've decided to move on to my Easter decorations. Again, the usual disclaimer. I wasn't anticipating posting these pictures anywhere so they aren't of the same quality or detail as if I were to post them now. So wait for next year's version. :)

This first photo is of the entire Easter mantle. You can see the centerpiece says Easter and is painted in pastel with 3 eggs hanging down. I didn't take a close up of it, but I got it from Hobby Lobby. 

 Next I took a close up of each side so you can see it a little better. I took a glass gar and filled it with some plastic eggs and put some fake grass down on the bottom. There was a purple garland which has its own eggs on it, but as you may or may not be able to tell there are some plastic eggs thrown in there as well. There was a large egg platter that I put up there for decoration, but could quickly double as a serving tray. Some white candles which never quite got around to being covered with scrapbook paper (another favorite trick of mine).  Next you see a pink "vase". It's actually a Carnival Cruise glass filled with Styrofoam flowers that are covered in glitter (Dollar Tree!).

This side of the mantle is pretty boring. It consists of 3 plain candles on my clear candlesticks. I love these candlesticks, but someday I'm going to make the candlesticks out of eggs shown here. There is also a rabbit which I found at Hobby Lobby (Do you sense a trend?!)

Finally I've got another example of my idea to use ornaments as napkin weights. Shown here is my example which was taken in the store before actually purchasing the items (gotta wait for the sale!).The egg says "Happy Easter" and the napkins are decorated eggs with some green background.

Ok Pinterest, here goes! Christmas Decor

Part of my motivation for resurrecting this blog was to post pictures of my stuff on Pinterest. I don't have much, and I have a lot on my phone still, but I found this picture on my computer. It was my centerpiece at our Christmas party last year.

As you can see it is pretty simple, but I really enjoyed it. It consisted of a green place mat, 2 red and white ball  and twine candle decoration, 2 white candles, a napkin holder, red and green Christmas napkins and a silver NOEL Christmas ornament.

I think this is one of the best ideas that has come to me. I love the look of matching napkin holders and napkins for parties. I seriously think I have a cocktail napkin addiction! But rather than spend $15 or more on the Mariposa or other brands of napkin holders...use ornaments! The one here was a silver star that said NOEL. It had a tie on it, and my napkin holder has a spot for a tie, but I didn't even use it. As we go through the other holidays you'll see I've purchased other ornaments to use for this purpose.

As a bonus I've included a picture of our Christmas mantle. Unfortunately it's not a great picture nor is it a very heavily decorated mantle. But I was more recording it for posterity not trying to post it for all to see. It includes a green wreath with red berries, a garland of greens, 6 different stocking holders (Christmas tree, metal moose, blue Christmas ball, gold bell, silver Christmas tree, and snowflake), and 3 stockings, a small cat stocking and a Santa hat.