Metallic (Goodwill!) mantel

Hello everybody! How was your weekend? We celebrated my Bub’s 7th birthday yesterday – SEVEN! I still can hardly believe it, he was just my sweet baby the other day. (I guess he’ll always be, whether he likes that or not.)

Anyway, we have a big Christmas decor tour starting today – my friend Chris at Just a Girl is coordinating a Christmas tour of homes this week with nearly 25 talented bloggers showing off their holiday homes. I’m sharing mine on Wednesday and my house is far from done. Guess what I’m doing today? :)

So I did get the mantel done this weekend, and I absolutely LOVE IT. I started by placing my big fluffy garland up there, like always, and stood back…and it was just too much. I wanted something simpler this year.

So I thunk. And stood in front of my stuff in the storage room. And thunk some more. And stared, till it came to me. I grabbed the glass containers I decorated for Christmas a few years ago and started placing them on the mantel.

The candleholders (just glass from Goodwill over the years) were all silver so I needed to pull in some gold to work with our mirror. (I’m getting lazier smarter as I age and wanted to just leave that there – I don’t want to have to move everything out to decorate for the holidays!) I found a bunch more of the glass containers in my stash (apparently I’ve been hoarding them) but needed to cover them. I got an idea to look through my wrapping paper -- score! I found this gorgeous, PERFECT, faux bois paper I had picked up at HomeGoods months ago:

Ugh. Perfect. It had the gold and touches of silver to tie in the other paper. I was never planning to use it as wrapping paper by the way – I always knew I’d find a use for it otherwise. I do this often.

I traced the shape of the glass on there, cut it out, then used double-sided tape to secure it:

I had to run to the craft store to grab a couple more pieces of the silver scrapbook paper to finish off my collection, and then I filled in the empty spots with greenery and pinecones:

It is so simple, really. Wrapping the paper around will take you some time, but it’s SO easy and so dang cheap. The extra scrapbook paper I had to get was on sale, so I spent $2 to finish it up.

I really love how it turned out:

It’s elegant and simple, and it lets the mirror shine. My fluffy garland made the mantel feel squatty and small. This opens it up quite a bit:

I used a combo of real tea lights and my fake candles/votives. I’ve had lit it all up every day and night since I finished.

The last few days have been cloudy and dreary and it looks so pretty, even during the day. But it truly shines at night:

I say this every year, but don’t be surprised if the mantel still looks like this in February. ;)

I love it that much:

Every one of those glass containers I've picked up at Goodwill. Well, actually I think I got a few from Hobby Lobby years ago for this table centerpiece. But most are from Goodwill over the years. I found the hobnail votives there a couple years ago too. (See how I used them for a fall tablescape here.) The few mercury votives are from Target and other stores over time.

The past couple of years I’ve used more and more real greenery to decorate for the holidays. You need to spray it every day or two (or not…sometimes I forget) to keep it from drying out but I love the way it looks and love that I don’t have to store it year to year. :)

Do you have a mantel or vignette you like to change up every year during the holidays? You can see my past mantels (and see how this space has changed over the years) here, here and here.