Happy Weekend Everyone!

mantle from personal collection

Like promised, I told y'all I would share my Christmas decor, so today I'll share our mantle and fireplace.

All year long we have candles in our fireplace. If we want a fire I just take them out, but I love how pretty they look when they are all lit. Not to mention our collection of silver candlesticks are from our wedding so it means a lot as well.

As for the mantle, I started by hanging both large acrylic snowflakes and small gold glittery snowflakes at different heights. Then I came back in and hung ornaments in between the snowflakes. Since I'm a huge fan of having real evergreen in the house at Christmas (smells so so good), I then arranged a lot of greenery along the top of the mantle and used 3 of the antique silver candlesticks from our wedding to "weight" the ends. *I don't buy garlands unless I'm draping them on a table or stairs, instead I go to a Christmas tree farm and ask if I can buy the trimmings leftover from the cut trees. More often than not, they just give it to you since they will throw it away anyways. And come on, who doesn't like free things?

close up from personal collection

Even with the tapers, I thought I still needed more candlelight and color, so I tucked ornaments and votives into the greenery. At first, I used real votives, but after a few minutes of being lit I heard popping noises and realized I was burning the evergreen. Whoops. Those quickly got replaced with battery operated ones!

And last but not least, I hung our stockings up. Bella has one too, but it isn't really that pretty so it's not going up until Christmas Eve. I plan on buying her one that matches ours during the after Christmas sales this year.

with our fireplace of candles from personal collection

Next week I'll show some of our other decorations. I wish I could show some of my diy presents, but since my whole family reads this blog I'll have to wait until after they get their presents to share!

Now I need to wrap up some work here because this afternoon I'm heading to a friends to do some holiday baking. I can't wait!! I love baking and it only gets better when it's during the holidays because then you make things like gingerbread men and really pretty decorated sugar cookies. so awesome.* I'll try and remember to take pictures!

I hope everyone has a great weekend! Any big plans?

*and yes, I know I could make these throughout the year, but seriously? gingerbread men just aren't as good in July.