A Christmas Miracle

It's a Christmas miracle! I'm updating my blog. Yeah, well, maybe not so much a miracle but a surprise anyway.

I've been wanting to decorate my mantle for Christmas. In years past I've just thrown up our stocking holders and called it a day. But this year I really wanted to make it pretty. I searched for pictures of pretty mantles that I could copy but could not find what I was looking for. I had an idea in my head but that usually does not transfer well into real life. But it did today. And I took pictures. Can you tell I had a lot of coffee today?

So the process. I started by cleaning the mirror and mantle so I could start with a blank slate.

I bought a 9 foot garland at Michael's. I added one sting of mini white lights that I wrapped around the garland. Too boring. I needed to add glitz and glitter. I'm all about the sparkly. That probably explains why I'm Team Edward.

I bought packages of glass ornaments- shiny red, matte red, red with gold glitter, shiny gold and a creamy white. The ornaments varied in size. You could do this with any color palette. Just make sure you get the same tones. Like if you want blue because it's a cool color, silver would probably look the best. I saw pink ornaments and copper and even black which might look kind of neat with white and silver. Oh, or silver and gold together would be pretty too. I need another mantle.

I took floral wire and gathered two or three different ornaments together and tied them to the garland. I used a bigger bunch in the middle of the mantle.

Then, I placed different sprigs of glittery leafy stuff throughout the garland to add color and texture.

I also bought this glass bead garland I found at Michael's that had the colors I wanted. At Garden Ridge I found some glass grape things. I thought the glass would catch the light nicely.


And the gold cone things, I bought at Target last year after Christmas. I didn't know what I was going to use them for. But they came in handy. It sounds like I spent a fortune but everything was 50% off. So all together it was probably $50. And I had a lot of stuff left over that I put on my Christmas tree to tie them together better. I'm pretty happy with the result. Now if I could be inspired to decorate something else in the house.


Maybe next Christmas.