Old Fashion Christmas Mantel

For some reason I was really stumped with this look, I just could not figure out what to use. Originally we were going to do an engineering print on wood but the place we use to get them are no longer allowed to print pictures like that so we went back to the drawing board. After our massive pumpkin on reclaimed wood, we knew we wanted something tall to give this area hight and really be the focal point of the room but we just could not figure out what to use.

After a few crazy busy days we finally were able to get back to this little project and on a whim decided to try the mirrors from our guest room up here.

This mantel has a very old fashion Christmas passed to it, so the color needed to harken to that and not clash but still fit in with the rest of the room. These creamy colored mirrors were the perfect solution! I love the lines on them and the decorative piece at the top, it reminds me of mirrors I have seen in some of the historic houses we've been to (just smaller of course!). 

I love this garland so much! It's a mix of frosted winter berries, flocked pinecone garland and cotton. We also fastened beautiful mercury glass ornaments to it. I love the classic feel it has, and I think the ornaments give it a charming vintage feel. We also ran battery operated LED fairy lights through the garland, they had a warm touch to the mantel, but are more invisible than regular Christmas lights.

Because our mirrors are very narrow we decided to hang a simple cotton wreath between them. It comfortably fills what otherwise is an awkward gap.

On either side of the mantel we used our heavy candlesticks, we actually tried adding in some cone trees but it just didn't feel right so we went back to these beauties. Another way to dress up simple candles would be to wrap them in birch bark or even glitter. We may end up going back and trying this (don't worry we'll post pictures!) but for now we left them plain.

We've picked up quite a wide selection of vintage volumes at estate sales and yard sales over the years, some in really good some of them quite worn and battered. But I love the look of old books, their worn covers, yellowed pages, cracked binding- so many passengers they've taken through their pages... This year we decided to display some of them on our mantel. We picked some in similar shades to our garland - reds, greens, and browns. We didn't do anything fancy with them just laid them against our mirror (make sure your books are secure and that it isn't putting pressure on the spine of the book, the last thing you want to do is have them break).

I found these adorable horse and cow imitation "pull toys" at Kroger for 50% off a couple weeks ago and fell in love with them. Aren't they adorable? Plus they harken back to the yesteryear vintage feel we were trying to weave into this look.

We hung these burlap and muslin stockings we made years ago along the mantel also, I love how they are a mixture of hard and frilly. I think they are the perfect touch to our mantel! Each one is a little different with ruffles and ribbons and frills and buttons.

We also sprinkled our vintage silver candlesticks here and there across the mantel.

In the middle of our mantel, we stacked our collection of vintage bibles and placed a little candlestick on top. To either side, we place several volumes with the spines toward the wall so all you see is the pages.

In front of our fireplace we placed this adorable white chest we picked up at an estate sale over the summer and this beautiful cupcake holder with several candles.

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