Valentine's Day Mantle

I took all the Christmas decorations down (left up some snow ones), and decided I needed to LOVE my mantle. Out came all the holiday floral and reindeer and in went some pinks, hearts, a candlestick and more hearts!

The two glass jars are from Michael's last year and all the other hearts: Michael's as well. The hearts are pretty easy to imitate. Just take a heart cut out of cardboard or wood (also found at your local hobby store) and cover in glue and drizzle with sequins or beads. It won't be as 3-D looking as these but it will do in a pinch. You can also find Christmas ornaments and rip things off of them to create hearts. Trust me. It's wrong but it works.

I have some snowflakes that were christmas ornaments tucked in here and there. The candle stick was purchased at Marshall's a few years ago. A little ribbon and some off-white Partylite candles and shazzam! It is now Valetine's ified. :o)

The "Wish" was a Kohl's after Christmas sale about 2 years ago. I use this for my Christmas/Winter mantle and it stays up for Valentine's day. It sometimes comes back out for the girls' birthday parties depending on the themes.

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It's Been a While and a FALL Plate Craft

While I haven't posted much on the blog since July... alright, not at all. You caught me! I have been doing things around our house. In fact, we have totally refinished our kitchen cabinets. More on that later.

For now, I wanted to share a fall plate craft idea I stole borrowed from Michael's Craft Stores. I was there this weekend, with coupon in hand for their Labor Day sale and snagged this great orange fall plate for only $0.99! Yup! The other supplies I used were:

a letter "G" for our last name: $2.29
orange glitter glue $0.99
Basic Grey paper (had at home)
scrapbook adhesive (had on hand at home)

So... for a total cost of $4.27+ tax I had a custom fall plate for my fall mantle.

Here are the steps.

Step 1: buy materials :o)

Step 2: trace and cut paper to fit inside plate and adhere with your favorite adhesive.

Step 3: using the glitter glue, cover the letter in glitter glue and smear around with finger for semi-even coverage.

Step 4: using glitter glue, make dots as a border around paper about every 1/4 inch.

Step 5: when dry, adhere letter to center of plate ( I used dots so my letter would be even more 3 dimensional)

Step 6: put on plate hanger or stand and enjoy!

Spring Fireplace Mantle!

I will be completely honest and say in my super busy life I did not change the Valentine's day mantle until last week. Yup! You heard me... it was a lot of LOVE in my house until March.

With that said, who wouldn't want a little more love?

Our spring time mantle will last until around mid-June when I will redo it as the summer mantle. We start out with some adorable ducks and ducklings I got a few years ago from a local store in Hagerstown.

I am reusing my amazing vase I found at Marshall's. My mother is also now making adorable block letters and made me a set for Mother's day. Of course, she gave them to me early so I could use them for my mantle.

A Valentine's Day Mantle in Pink

 

Okay so I have played around and come up with my Valentine's Day mantle. I've had it up for a week but I'm just a little slow with the blog this week. We've been a little nuts at school and things aren't beginning to settle down for a few more weeks.

Here is what I did. I had the "Wish" word up for Christmas, carried it through January and just can't seem to put it away. I am just in LOVE with this sparkly word and I think it might just be my mantra for this year. I tied a small pink ribbon around the "I" just for fun. I also stacked it up on a few books and covered it with a white gauzy scarf to boost it in height.

Next up is our beautiful candlestick. I had this sitting on the piano for Christmas and January and was just dying to get it onto the mantle for February. I used two different pink ribbons tied in a bow to spruce it up.

I bought this awesome shiny vase at T.J. Maxx for $10!!!! I LOVE it! I filled it with fresh carnations a student got me last week for my birthday. There is sand in the bottom and a small glass vase inside with water for the carnations since the vase is way too tall for them on its own.

The small glass hurricane is from Partylite a few years ago with a pink candle inside. The Longaberger basket with our "G" is still there from January. I just LOVE it as well. The little greenery is from my hallway shelf. It is a small Chinese ceramic container filled with button fern. Also, the white lights from January are still up as well. The girls just adore how it glows at night with the fireplace and us all in the living room. They may have to go by March though. We'll see.

The Winter Mantle Plus a New Mirror. Finally!

I have been looking for a mirror for months as we redid our living room. I saw two potentials today at Target and then my mother called. She said Kirklands at the Prime Outlets was having a sale and I hopped in the car and picked her up. Once there I found all sorts of great things! I went a little crazy but I was able to purchase my mirror for only $39.99! I also found some great picks for the vase on the floor and 3 great matching picture frames to be hung in the living room later.

It took some measuring, remeasuring and then calling my step-dad but finally we got the mirror hung up and straight.

Then I put up some Christmas white lights and covered them with a white gauze scarf. Then came our word for the year WISH.  Dream will be next if I can find one. I love word art but it has to be just so and this word was just beautiful.

Then came some glass jars, a few Longaberger baskets just cuz, a blue and brown vase, some of my grandmother's books and a topiary. I will spray paint the bottom of the topiary silver but for now it adds dimension and height.

Yes I am aware that our heat vent is not back in place at the top right hand side of the picture. It will be done tomorrow. I promise. I am ashamed to say it has been out for a month! I forgot to put it back in for our Christmas eve party after painting that wall and then doing the picture molding and it has sat in the corner of our room ever since. I guess I just don't notice it. But it will be fixed.

Stay tuned for a our new Project Pembroke Linky where each Saturday we feature projects done by YOU! 

TatertotsandJello

The "Winter" Mantle.... HELP! Plus a little Christmas Clearance Love

Alright well the Christmas mantle came down and I'm working on a mantle decor that I can keep up from January through maybe March.  You know...a SNOW theme. Well, here is what I've got going so far. I've thrown all this together and no most of it doesn't look good. If I had found a mirror for the wall it would help me visualize but I'm still on the search.

So what do you think? The baskets yes or no? I love the glass look but I did already take down the cloche so I could move around some other things. The girls just love the lights with the white over it and I like the Wish saying as we always WISH for snow in this house. We're both teachers remember.

The "Wish" was found on clearance at Kohl's for less than $6 and look at my new tree! We are keeping this baby up all year and just decorating it a little extra for each holiday. It was $32 at Marshall's. Now I NEVER spend that much money on anything but finding this it just screamed at me. I'm SO glad I bought it. My husband likes it and the girls are just nuts over the idea of having a lighted tree up all year.

Am I crazy for doing it? It is only about 4 feet tall and in that adorable little stand. It isn't Christmasy with a kind of lime green theme so I'm hoping to pass it off all year.

The Christmas Mantle and Decorations... a little late

I know, I know... it's after Christmas but things were a little crazy here at Pembroke Lane before. School was in session until Dec. 23rd and we had my in-laws over to do our Christmas celebration on the 24th. So it's been nuts!

Here are my lovely Christmas decorations. This being the first year I've had a fire place it was quite fun decorating. I took down all the decorations this morning so they are all naked. *shh don't tell anyone*

I actually added two smaller triangular trees to the right in a gold/silver mix to even out the height a bit.  I am still missing a beautiful mirror for the top so it looks a bit plain. But... here are the details of my first attempt.

 

I had a dark bamboo mat that was a table runner but WAY too big for my table. I folded the edges over and under to fit my fireplace and built my entire centerpiece on top of it. The three snowflake came from a shop in Hershey Park when we went a few weeks ago. I have seen the same ones at either Target or Walgreens, can't seem to remember which.

The greens are a HUGE swag my mother gave me. The greens have a burgundy ribbon, burgundy grapes? and some brown/goldish leaves. I wound it around the tall silver tree I purchased last year at Pier 1.

Two of the snowflakes were completely silver while the middle one was gold and silver.

The two small reindeer were present from my mom last year so I'm not sure where she got them from. I just purchased a beautiful gold reindeer that is much larger at Kohl's after Christmas sale for $8 to add to it for next year. 

I also made a cloche that ended up having a gold pillar candle in it. In this shot it still has my votive with red beads in it.

This is my front entry table. I added three hanging pine cone stars to the mirror. I purchased those at the Christmas tree store 1/2 price the day after Christmas. The small pine cone tree was a gift from my mother last year. The angel is from Hallmark and was a Christmas present from my husband last year. The country tree was purchased at the Kris Kringle craft show at Hagerstown Community College in November. This table is the first thing you see upon entering my house. It is on the left immediately after my front door.