Our Christmas "Mantel"

One of the (many) things that our simple Victorian farmhouse lacks when compared to it's more interesting counterparts is a fireplace.

What we do have is a nice oak barrister bookcase. It's not an antique piece, but Mike did pick it and it's twin up at an auction for around $40 each. Not bad, not bad.

Anyway, I decided that the top of the barrister bookcase would be Christmas mantel. And as soon as I decided that, I couldn't wait to decorate it. Last year was our first Christmas in the house, so we just sort of threw everything that had been given to us out in the living room and called it a day. I'm hoping to be a little more structured this year!

So I hit up Walmart for supplies (because you should never go to Michael's without a coupon):

The vintage Crown fruit jars were a recent find at Goodwill, but I bought fake pine garland ($2.96), scented tea lights ($3.00), 4 ornaments ($1.96 each), epsom salt ($7.96), and 3 spools of ribbon (2 at $2.50 and 1 at $2.96). I spent around $35 after taxes (and a bag of mini eggs!), but I don't mind because so much of it will be used again, and the ribbon can be used throughout the year since I didn't buy Christmas specific.

Thanks to Melissa over at The Inspired Room, I knew I wanted to use epsom salt as "snow" in my Crown jars with the tea lights (see her's here).

Without further ado, our Christmas "mantel"!

Nope, your eyes don't deceive you. That's Piggers playing the part of Christmas Ham (ha!).

A little lights out action:

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Isn't this little guy cute?

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So shiny!

And I think Piggers fits in just fine. He's shiny too, and has a pretty bow.

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Snort!

The fake pine garland was really nice to work with - it came in one really long strand, and it's made of wire so that it bends easily. It was great for getting it to sit where I wanted on the bookcase.

At first I had the jars all sitting right on the top of the bookcase, but I decided to stagger them a little more. I added coasters and subways tiles underneath to get different heights.

Has anyone else started their Christmas decorating yet? This is the only thing I'll do for awhile yet - not feeling ready to go dig the other decorations out of the basement!

I've linked up to:

P.S. Posting every weekday is exhausting! I just can't keep up with it with working full time and having boring ol' chores to take care of. In an effort to produce regular good content, I'm going to only post on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Cheers!