This year Christmas decorations are all about Vintage, Glitter and White.
This year I decided not to put up my Christmas Tree. I know, collectively everyone can gasp with horror! … it’s a weird decision but I DID put up a small one with some unbreakable (we’ll see about that…) ornaments on so the boys at least have something. Why, you ask, did I not put a tree up? Well, for those of you who didn’t know, I lost my cat a week and a half ago and he had loved sleeping under the tree. So, I’m taking a year off from the tree, to keep myself from crying every time I see it. Snickerdoodle, may you RIP…
Moving on… (I could feel the non-animal lovers yawning…)
After making the decision to leave the tree in the box this year, I was actually a bit lost without the time consuming decoration of the tree. I found myself spending more and more time on my mantle than I had in previous years and decided to do a post showcasing it. Technically, it’s not done but if I waited until every project was done to do a blog post on it I’d never post. I have misplaced 2 stocking holders so I need to get some for Ben and I’s stockings, and I plan on dousing the entire mantle with white glitter. Here is my mantle below:
I am usually pretty simple when it comes to decorating. Other than the stocking holders and glitter, I don’t plan on purchasing anything. I like to use what I have and modify it for the holidays. I kept my vintage mirror above the mantle and centered my nativity scene in front of it. Since I didn’t put any lights up there and my nativity set holds tea lite candles, I wanted the mirror to reflect the light when it was lit. I added a glittery gold cone and round ornament on either end to balance out shape and color. In the past I went pretty gold, but this year I wanted to include a lot more silver and white.
I think greenery can overpower a mantle and the delicate decorations so I only added a little on either end of my mantle, on either side of the mirror. The green gave a nice, festive appearance. I put white candle sticks on my black holders and balanced it out with 2 on one end and 1 on the other. Since I knew I was going to hang the gold and white stockings on the right I wanted that side to be a little lighter with decorations and colors so it didn’t look imbalanced over all.
Again, in the effort to be balanced, I built from the bottom up on the left side, putting a wide, shallow white bowl on top of a vintage hat box. I kept with the round shape and put white and silver balls in it, with 1 gold one and a few smaller ones to give it color. I also decided to add a simple, white tree topper in the bowl to give an interesting shape and build that side up a little more. I liked that I could see through the star so it didn’t block anything visually or look heavy.
My favorite thing that I did was tie twine up at the top of my fireplace, around the whole thing. My fireplace has a hallway behind it so I had all 4 sides to work with. I centered each wall with a vintage-looking, star ornament then got some vintage glass ornaments and grouped them in two’s and hung them on either side. To give it some additional interest, I included a few silver balls, of different sizes. I thought this was a fun way to give my white fireplace some subtle flair.
My gold and black chairs in front of the fireplace round out the look and I smile every time I look at my fireplace.
My Fireplace and Mantle
Did you decorate your fireplace and mantle? If so, please leave a link below in a comment so I can check it out! If you don’t blog and just use Twitter and Instagram, you can click on the time stamp and it should bring up the individual URL in the web browser that you can include so I can see your Tweet. 
Please take the time to do so, I LOVE looking at other designs!