A Santa Mantle

Merry Christmas! I love Christmas… Love love love. This year I wanted simple and traditional decorations… Lots of greenery with burlap and jute… I wanted it to feel comfortable and welcoming. This year is the first year that my girlies really “get” Christmas. They understand (as much as they can about Jesus) and love looking at the mangers… Anne Pearce came running in the living room after her bath the other night. She was totally naked except for a blanket wrapped all around her face. She looked at her daddy and said, “You Jesus. I da mama.” Priceless. They’re also understanding the whole “naughty vs. nice” deal and their friend Bobby, the elf on the shelf. They’re so excited, and I wanted to do the mantle for THEM. Now mind you, I love me some Santa… I have a thing for him. I’ve collected Santas for years and pick up at least one new one per season. Since we didn’t have a mantle at all last year (no fireplace) I was so excited to be able to decorate this precious one my hubby built. (You can read about that here.) Here’s my final result. The girls LOVE it, and I’m very happy with the way it turned out.

As you can see Santa reigns on this mantle.

Doesn’t matter that we lost the Iron Bowl. Santa still says, “ROLL TIDE”!

I made a garland out of a piece of Hobby Lobby greenery, upholstery webbing, and jute twine. I love the vintage rustic look it gives the mantle and the way it compliments the stained wood mantle.

 

This mantle is loaded down with our traditional needlepoint stockings. The girls love identifying whose is whose. It’s funny, because when they get to mine they say it’s Lou Lynn’s. Not mamas. I asked if the Santa was Andrew Lynn’s. Nope. It’s Daddy’s.

I layered mirrors with candles to give the fireplace a glow. We have some lights in the top, and they really look pretty together.

My mama got be this fabulous hurricane from the shop where she works. The candle holder comes out, so you can fill the bottom with seasonal items… No fear of anything catching on fire here.

I got the candy canes at the same shop. They have stakes on them, so they’re easy to stick anywhere.

I love that crazy looking short and fat Santa. He cracks me up.

I wanted some real firewood, so I loaded up my antique coal bucket. It makes it feel more authentic. I told Andrew that I wish we could light some up in the fireplace. :)

Another view of the coal bucket with the candles and mirrors.

 

Don’t those 2 tall skinny Santas look like they were made to stand there?

A side view. I really love the webbing tied on the garland.

One last view.

We love the warmth and dimension our fake fireplace has given our living room. It was so much fun to decorate for Christmas, and I really enjoy sitting with my girls and just enjoying the view.

love and hugs.

Linking to:

Easy Christmas Decoration: How to Make a Holly Wrap for Your Lampshades

Hi all! I’ve had so much fun decorating my house for Christmas! My theme for this year is vintage traditional… I think I just made that up. I’m using lots of texture like burlap,  jute, greenery, and some upholstery webbing thrown in.  As I was working on my living room today I decided to “Christmas” my lamps up. I thought I’d share this easy project with you.

What you’ll need:

upholstery webbing (available at most fabric stores. Mine was $.29 per yard), greenery (fake or live), red Christmas balls, jute or twine, wire clippers, and upholstery tacks (or hot glue if you prefer).

Time to get busy.

First, cut a piece of greenery for the front of your lamp. Hold some up, and just see what size looks right. I did a small version and a larger one for 2 lamps in my living room. Fluff it out, and make a center space for the holly bunch.

I used some small red shatterproof balls I got at the Dollar Tree.

The holes were tiny at the top, so I separated my jute into 3 strands. It made it much easier to string the balls.

For the larger version I strung 3 balls together.

When you have them all strung on flip them over and secure with a double knot.

Then it looks like this:

Turn your greenery over, and tie the holly bunch to your greenery in the center.

Measure around your lamp shade, and cut a piece of webbing to size. Fold it in half, and really crease the center line.

I got a long piece of twine, wrapped it around and through the holly bunch, and tied it tightly in the back to attach the holly bunch to the webbing. I then brought the long lengths around and tied a bow in the front.

There’s the holly attached to the webbing.

Now wrap your webbing around to the back of your lampshade. I’m going to leave mine wrapped in webbing after Christmas, so I decided to secure the webbing with upholstery tacks. You could also hot glue it if you prefer.

I took my lamp shade off at this point to attach the holly wrap. It was too awkward to attach on my floor lamp. I didn’t have any problems with the smaller lamp though. Here’s mine attached with upholstery tacks.

This is what my lamp looked like before:

And here’s the finished product. My lamps are all wrapped up for Christmas. I love the texture and dimension they bring to my room.

This antique table lamp got a smaller version.

This was such an easy project and didn’t take much time or money at all. They were the first thing my mama noticed when she came in to look at all my decorations today, and they make me smile every time I look at them.

Now go make yourself some holly wraps for your lampshades, columns, or anything else you can think to attach them to. Please feel free to share this tutorial with anyone you want, but please link back to me.

I’ll be sharing more Christmas decorations and ideas over the next couple of weeks. Feel free to email me if you have any questions.

love and hugs,

linking up to:

Miss Mustard Seed's Furniture Feature Friday
My repurposed Life's Catch as Catch Can

Domestically Speaking's Power of Paint Party

Primitive & Proper's Piece of Work Wednesday

My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia

Stories of a House Project Diaries

The Shabby Chic Cottage's Transformation Thursday

Between Naps on the Porch Metamorphosis Monday

Savvy Southern Style

Frugalicious Friday at Finding Fabulous

Style Feature Saturday at Perfectly Imperfect

Friday at Remodelaholic

http://dittledattle.blogspot.com/2010/11/first-ever-linky-party-amaze-me-monday.html

iron bowl decorating for $0

Ok. So we lost. It was sad. I’m still not over it, BUT life goes on. :) If you don’t know it already I’m a HUGE Alabama football fan. This year we hosted a little Iron Bowl party with fans of both varieties. It was the day after Thanksgiving, so I was exhausted from all the festivities… I seriously decided at about 11:30 that morning that I would do a “little decorating” for the game. Mind you. At 11:30 I still had on my pj’s, still had to make a couple of hot dips, AND get my house back straightened up. I quickly noticed how red and gray show up all over my house…. I think it’s my subconscious Bama love speaking to me all the time. I grabbed some fabric from my stash and got busy.

I used some Bama fabric as a garland and wove it though my mantle.

I added some ribbon to use as napkin rings using the same placemats and napkins I used for Thanksgiving.

My scale also got some houndstooth loving and a touch of red.

Another quickly folded piece of fabric becomes a table runner… Red and white ribbon decked out the old pitcher.

More red and houndstooth. I can’t believe that I didn’t take ANY pictures of the food! It stretched from one end of my kitchen to the next. We ate GOOD peeps.

It COULD be that I forgot to take pictures of the food, because I had TOO many of these… Just sayin’…

This was the chalkboard BEFORE the party. Everyone put little messages… Let’s just say it wasn’t all blog appropriate. :)

I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE my Judith March Alabama dress, although it’s so stinkin’ short that I wear it as a tunic. I try to ignore the fact that it makes me look like I’m expecting a baby, which I’M NOT! This cutie is one of my besties Beth. We’ve been great friends for over 10 years. Our love goes deeper than football.

I adore my hubby even though he goes for the WRONG team as evidenced by his choice of shirt.

Part of the crew during the game… I wasn’t in the mood to take any pictures after halftime. :( I MAY have almost thrown my camera across the room…

I had to share this, just because it’s hilarious. I told Andrew that the decorator loves Bama…. I didn’t happen to have anything Auburn colored laying around. Go figure. :) He found this Fanta can in orange and blue and wrote War Eagle at the top. This was the only AU decoration in the house.

Even though my team didn’t pull the win off we had a fantastic time with friends and family. Auburn has earned bragging rights for the rest of the year, but I only have one thing to say: JUST WAIT UNTIL NEXT YEAR!! Roll Tide Forever!

Don't have a mantle to decorate for Christmas? Build one.

Edited to add: The mantle is now all decked out for Christmas. You can see that post here.

Peeps. Andrew rocks. Seriously. He really really rocks. We love our house. It’s perfect for our family. There’s only one little bitty thing that bothered me…. It has no fireplace. Thus, no mantle. Who doesn’t love decorating a mantle?? Last Christmas I missed a mantle so badly. It just wasn’t the same. Andrew told me that this year I would have mantle woes no more. We started thinking and planning. WHAT exactly did we want? Where would it go? What was the look we were going for?

Our first thought was to do something like this from PB:

I loved the chippiness…..the colors…I also LOVE the yummy stuff on top… We liked it but thought we wanted a more traditional looking mantle.

So, we started searching the Internet for inspiration. What would we build?? hmmmmm

Something like this? Simple and traditional?

this maybe? Another traditional… I LOVE that Magnolia wreath and those urns….

This really caught my eye…. The black distressed wood was gorgeous… I REALLY thought about this…

Should we do something like this beauty? We couldn’t replicate the marble or the gorgeous carving, but we COULD have that curved opening and add a lot of wooden embellishments.

As I was searching and looking nothing seemed PERFECT for this house. I wanted it to look like it was born in THIS house. Like it was meant to be here…. We thought we had a plan, and then I spotted this:

Mandi at Vintage Revivals won a huge contest with this fabulous “faux fireplace” she made out of cabinet doors. Genius I say! We wanted more of a fireplace instead of just a mantle… This piece was the ultimate inspiration. She has a wonderful tutorial on how she did it here if you want to build one like hers…. Andrew thought it was a fantastic idea to use cabinet doors. It took all the hard work of adding the details out of the mix…. No trimming out and adding all the panels…. Way to GO! We headed to our local Restore and climbed through ALL their panels. We had measured our wall where our fireplace was going and searched for panels with the look we wanted in the right dimensions. We came home with this:

We added some 1 x 6’s for the hearth and a 1 x 12 for the mantle itself.

My man went to building. Don’t ask me the specifics.. I don’t build :) We had that old piece of moulding left from one of our repaired pieces, and it was perfect for the mantle support….

I stained the hearth and mantle with dark walnut. We wanted a more traditional looking fireplace with a twist… Isn’t that hearth divine?? Can you believe it was made from regular cheapy 1 x 6’s?

All painted and ready to go!

And FINALLY! Here she is in our home! Our house is an original cottage of Fairhope, and the living room has a strange shape. This small bump out wall was the only place we really had, but it’s perfect here. Doesn’t it look like it was born here??

I glazed over the entire piece with RL Tobacco glaze. I love where the moulding meets the sides. He cut one double panel cabinet down the center to make the sides.

He really worked at keeping the scale in proportion with the wall.

He notched out the back to fit perfectly on the wall.

The electrical outlet kept us from leaving the back open. We thought about adding a piece of beadboard to the back, but I decided to just layer some mirrors instead.

I pulled things from around the house to put together a quick simple mantle for Thanksgiving with the family.

I am SO thrilled with the end product. It ended up being just what we wanted, and the cabinet doors made it a much easier process for Andrew. He completely built it in an afternoon. The next day it got painted and assembled. It added just the right touch for our living room. I can’t wait to decorate it for Christmas today or tomorrow!

Here’s our little family this Thanksgiving. There’s so many of us we kinda cover it up!

It’s a perfect space to sit with my girls….

or to put all the cousins for a picture. We all realized later that we all took turns looking like goober mommies in the mirror trying to get the kids to cooperate. See those little grubby handprints on the mirror?? That’s the story of my life….

I am so thankful that my sweet hubby indulges most of my “wants”. Even if we could just go buy things like this we wouldn’t. We love making our house our home with things WE redo and make. It makes things that much more special. Don’t you think so?

love and hugs.

Thanks for looking. I’m linking up to:

Miss Mustard Seed's Furniture Feature Friday
My repurposed Life's Catch as Catch Can

Domestically Speaking's Power of Paint Party

Primitive & Proper's Piece of Work Wednesday

My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia

Stories of a House Project Diaries

The Shabby Chic Cottage's Transformation Thursday

Between Naps on the Porch Metamorphosis Monday

Savvy Southern Style

Frugalicious Friday at Finding Fabulous

Style Feature Saturday at Perfectly Imperfect

Friday at Remodelaholic

Restore it Wednesday at Restore Interiors

Piece of Work Wednesday at Primitive and Proper