Hello friends!  Hope this finds you doing great and that you have a wonderful Wednesday!

OK….let’s talk about the title…YEP, you read it right.  Another change to my Christmas mantel.   I know….I know who would do that twice let alone three times in one month?  NOT by choice ya’ll.  First one I was truly happy with and actually loved it.  But things happen.  The second one was pretty but just didn’t give me the “WOW” factor.

Let’s do a recap of ALL of my mantels for this Christmas season. ha!

Here is my first design.

As most of you know what my mishap was, but for those who don’t here is what happened.  One night the Santa picture fell off the nail and took down two of the glass candle holders with it.  Glass went everywhere!  I could not save the picture and both candle holders were shattered in little bits and pieces.

Back to the drawing board I went.  I pulled out another Santa picture that I wasn’t going to use this year.  It had a dark frame and mat which made it very dark up on my mantel so I painted both off white and added three of my wooden candlesticks.  I wanted the same concept as the first design.

This is what the second Christmas mantel looks like.

Don’t get me wrong this one is pretty too, just loved the first one.

You are all so sweet and I am so touched by all the kind and thoughtful messages I got on Facebook and Instagram regarding my mishap.  I had people offer to fix my Santa picture.  I was considering letting a friend take a look at my Santa print to see if she could possibly fix it, but my husband and me thought even if she could fixed the print the frame would cost more to replace than what I would pay for a new picture.  So…I decided not to waist her time going through all the trouble fixing it.  I still have the damaged Santa picture.  Why? I don’t know.  I had a couple of offers from merchants that they wanted to send me an item.  I was amazed that there are sweet people offering to help out with my mantel decor.  I decided to accept one shop’s offer to send me an item to style above my fireplace mantel.  They said they saw all of my Instagram feed and would take that into consideration.  Monday, I received my gift.  When I opened the package I was a little puzzled on how I was going to style it.

Here is the beautiful sign that I received from Rustic Country Home.  You can purchase this through Etsy.

I thought right away…..I am going to have to start with a bare mantel.  When I got home that evening I went right to decorating.  I started searching through my decorations on what I could use.

I knew I wanted to use my white painted reindeer and I thought that the white wooden candlesticks would also work with the Christmas sign.  I still needed something else, but just didn’t know what.

I removed all the ribbon from the garland that was up there before and added two shoestring bows to each corner of the garland.

I had this single tall shutter that I used on my Fall front porch this year (if you haven’t seen my Fall porch, you can go HERE).  I thought I would cut that in two pieces and place on both sides of my mantle with a evergreen stem and bow tacked to them. I put the Christmas sign in the center.  I then grabbed my tobacco basket (which I purchased that a couple of months ago) and stood it up on one side and placed it on the mantle underneath the sign.  I didn’t center it I placed it more to the one side.  I kept the candle sticks and deer as they were before.  I placed a floral arrangement in front of the basket to give it a little pop of color.  The floral arrangement is white magnolias, berries and pine twigs.  The finishing touch was adding the two red ornaments that were in the garland of the first two mantel settings.  One in the center of the garland and the other one leaning in the tobacco basket next to the arrangement.

It actually was coming together once I cut the shutter to size.

Here is my Christmas mantel using the Christmas sign I received.

It is a different spin than what I usually create.  What do you think?  I would love to hear your thoughts.

Here are some more views.

I am sitting here typing this blog in our family room and I can honestly say that I do love my new fireplace Christmas mantel.  The sign fits in with the color theme of the room.  Placing the shutters made the whole mantle come alive.  I might just keep those shutters up even after the Christmas decorations are all put away.  What do you think?

I want to thank you for stopping by today and I want to welcome all my new friends!  Hope you will come back to my Friday’s blog.

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Stay Strong and Stay Blessed!

Terrie