tied up with a bow

I took advantage of a morning full of holiday spirt (you gotta feel Christmasy after spending a morning with Santa and his elves) to tackle my mantel before I thought too much about it and psyched myself out. I found my inspiration and got an idea.

I'll make all those hurricanes I have stashed in the basement useful and stick artfully arrange Christmas lights in there and make those suckers glow. But my big honkin strands of lights we use on the tree were not fitting into my little hurricanes.

One trip to Hobby Lobby later and I had 4 boxes of the shortest strand of lights I could find - a white string of 25 for $1.99. Wahoo.

Lazy note/sign of a faux crafter: There are serval tips on Pinterest about how to drill a hole in your glass to get the strand to feed thru the bottom so the cord doesn't show etc. However I'm of the opinion that if you are standing close enough to my mantel that you see little white cords popping from the top/back of my hurricanes and this horrifies you, you have yet to have enough cocktails. Sit down, I'll shake you another drink.

So with my hurricanes all light up I started to play with my ribbon. Tie it around the hurricane? Boring. Wrap it? Not without my glue gun. String it from the... huh? Yeah no, not working.

It was about this time that I had to run some errands and being the excellent example and Mom that I am, I of course neatly organized and cleaned up my project before I left. Yeah right. When I came back though, I saw my 'clean up' stuffed in the hurricanes and thought, you know what, that doesn't look half bad. With a little fluff here and there, I ended up with this. (Sometimes a haphazard clean up pays off)

We call this casual ribbon placement

For shame - my cord!

One piece down. A few more to go.

I also wanted a bit of height and greenery. I'm not spending major duckets to pop those mamma jammas in front of my faux hearth. So I went with a scaled down version. And we will plant them in the backyard when we are done.

I was feelin good, feelin pumped.  But that big black hole was sucking all the festiveness out of my progress.

how DO you take a picture of a mirror without yourself smack in the middle?

I love this idea (if only my fireplace worked I would be all over some red wood).

From decorartsnow.com

So a few snips of wrapping paper and here we are. Thanks Target for making wrapping paper that satisfies my red addiction and my polka dot addiction all in one. And it sparkles too.

Ewww. Ahhh. Ohhh.

So there you have it. (I'll try to take some more moody night time lights pictures if I can figure out the while balance on my camera.) The mantel is done and I'm ready to move on to the tree.

What have you done with your mantel? Do you have trouble getting your stockings to stay in place with little hands around? (we've had to take our down until the big night) Any holiday decorations you are excited about? It can't be just me people. C'mon!