Glam holiday mantel

09 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by casadeberry in 2013, decor, glam, holiday, living room, mantel

Our holiday decor “stash” is one that we add to every year. Also, I love to use things that we’d ordinarily have around the house anyway, and add them to our holiday decor. A couple of pieces in this mantel are a good example.

The two lanterns you see are part of our every day decor. The lovely one on the left is from Pier 1, we paid a couple of bucks for it because one of the pieces of glass was missing. The red one on the right is from IKEA.

I wrapped a couple of bottles in green yard for contrast to all the red and gold, and stuck a variety of branches in each. Steve had the WISH stocking holders since before we met, they’re from Pottery Barn, I think.

Our tree is also a forever work-in-progress. We started with many generic ornaments and over the past few years have been working on replacing them with more meaningful ornaments:

When our tree topper broke a couple of years ago, Steve (of course) rigged a star I had from Pier 1, and we’ve been using that as our topper. People have asked where we got it and love it because it’s so bright and cheerful.

That is our living room all decked out for the holidays, along with the village Steve put together. Next time I will show you our outside decorations – have a great week!

Raise the red lantern

01 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by casadeberry in 2012, ikea, mantel, red

≈ 7 Comments

FINALLY!!!
I swear when I saw the stack of them, I started power walking down the aisle with my poor husband going, “what? WHAT??”

You see, after many, many trips to IKEA, I was surprised to see dozens and dozens of the red Rotera lanterns just waiting for me to pick them up and fondle them. They’ve never had them in red. Or maybe they did, every single time I was NOT at my local IKEA, but anyway, they had them this time and Steve, understanding my giddiness, told me to grab more than one. He’s so awesome. He also got some small strands of battery-powered lights for some holiday crafting.

With our beautiful new living room wall color and chocolate brown accents, I knew the red lantern would be a perfect pop of color:

I am totally loving this look — right now our mantel is decorated for the holidays but my precious (ha) red lanterns are here to stay.

LOVE banner

30 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by casadeberry in 2012, craft, february, mantel, paper, turquoise, valentines

≈ 4 Comments

I saw this sweet banner at Simple as That and knew I had to make something like it for my Valentine’s Mantel. Of course my turquoise obsession is permeating even this most “red” of holidays, but I figure, I can throw red somewhere else in the house. For now, this is what I came up with, based on Rebecca’s idea:

I went with scrapbook paper in an argyle pattern, some of the lines have glitter, which catches the light very nicely.

I layered turquoise hearts matted with white glitter cardstock. The hearts are topped with scalloped circles from the same white glitter cardstock and letter stickers spelling LOVE. The banner is “hung” from my fleur-de-lis candlesticks.

This banner can obviously be made in endless color/pattern/theme combinations, so I have a feeling there are more pretty banners in my future. Thanks to Rebecca for this great idea!

Thanksgiving Mantel

14 Monday Nov 2011

Posted by casadeberry in boys, craft, fall, gardening, mantel, november, orange, paper, thanksgiving

≈ 1 Comment

As you might have seen in my silly turkey garland post, our mantel has been de-Halloween-ed and is now ready for Thanksgiving. But last Thursday the boys and I made a little something to add up there.

I got the inspiration for this from pinterest, of course, but I decided to make this craft with stuff I had on hand.

I have been saving glass jars for the past few months, I’m trying to replace plastic food storage as much as I can, and I had a few pasta sauce jars that weren’t all the same size but they worked in a group.

Then I added a band made of scrapbook paper, created the letters and border on Photoshop, and added some curling ribbon. The contents of the jars are dried out corn husks and stems from my backyard.

I think it looks nice atop my dark mantel:

As you can tell, my boys have started to pick off some of the poor turkeys’ eyes and even one of the faces (look to the right end of the garland). As long as they don’t eat them, I’m fine with it 😀 The dried sunflowers on the right are also from my backyard, we got tons of seeds, so yummy!

Hope you have a great Monday!

Our new mantel

18 Thursday Aug 2011

Posted by casadeberry in living room, mantel, wood

≈ 3 Comments

The living room mantel is the focal point of our main living area. You see it as soon as you come in the front door – here it is decked out for spring back in March:

The problem is, the “wall” above the mantel was just a sheet of foam over the brick, which goes from floor to ceiling. We discovered this when we tried to hang a picture and made a huge hole instead.

We decided to tear down the foam and put up some sheetrock instead – at the same time, I really hated the current mantel, so my husband graciously built me a new one 😀

Below is the 2×4 that is nailed to the brick wall – the mantel is attached to this and it serves as support.

Checking to make sure the fit is perfect.

Applying wood putty to the rough edges and nail holes:

Our oldest was a very big help!

Painting the sheetrock to match the rest of the walls – we chose to paint the new mantel and frame in a dark chocolate brown:

The rich brown is a very close match to our TV console, coordinates with the large IKEA picture above, and is a good addition to our warm-toned living room.

Here is our new mantel area dressed up with some vintage Paris pictures and pretty flowers:

I LOVE this area, it looks brighter, cleaner and so much nicer – hope you enjoyed our little project!