Holiday "Mantel"

You know how I have a girl crush on Emily Henderson?  AND I can't resist a challenge?  Well, she's hosting a fantastic giveaway that's not your standard blog giveaway.  She'll be choosing 5 winners based on their mantel decor.  The top prize is the mantel that gets the most votes and the other 4 are of Emily's choosing. What are the prizes, you ask? Good question!  Amazing vintage furniture and accessories from Emily's amazing personal collection.  Count me in!! I generally keep my holiday decor simple and I was trying to resist the urge to go style-crazy this year... but this is as good of an excuse as any!  Check out my version of holiday mantel decor and go vote for my mantel/piano HERE!

Only cool people have vintage Christmas music for both piano AND accordion.  If only I could play the accordion.  What makes me smile about this is that my sister and I learned piano with that book 20 years ago, and my dad learned accordion with the other book almost 50 years ago.

Go vote for my decor HERE!!!  Purdy please?  What are you waiting for?? Tell your friends!  Vote!

Light My Fire

Cold weather has the same effect on me as it does molasses.  I keep on going, but my pace is significantly slower.  Unfortunately, that means that projects take longer which frustrates my urge to have everything done yesterday. A week and a half ago, I showed you this collection of misfit thrift store candlesticks.

Today, they're refreshed and are hanging out on the piano as a makeshift menorah.  A psuedo-menorah AND a Christmas tree??  Yup, we're a mixed family.  Neither Hubby or I are religious, however we love honoring the traditions we were raised with.  Hubby knew that if he married me, I came with a Christmas tree.  non-negotiable.  Luckily, I'm apparently worth it.  yay!

Anyway... yes, I am well aware that Hanukkah ended last night, but I assure you I had these up before... even though they didn't get lit.

Of the 9 candlesticks, 4 got cleaned/polished and 5 got spraypainted gold or silver.  I always loved collections of mismatched candlesticks unified in some way.  In fact, I dreamed of having them as my wedding centerpiece (sadly a venue with candle restrictions put the kibosh on that).

I really love the 2 brass ones.  They polished up amazingly and will probably hang out in my non-holiday decor too.  (You can also play "find the photog" in that pic thanks to a shiny ornament)

I have a few things up my sleeve for this week including a long overdue furniture refresh how-to, so stay tuned!

Silver and Gold

Apparently making clay ornaments is addicting.  24 hand made clay ornaments was enough to cover the tree, although I could have kept going.

I used A Beautiful Mess' clay ornament tutorial for inspiration and went wild.  This year for our tree, I decided on a silver and gold theme (with a few splashes thrown in, cuz that's how I roll), so once baked, I decorated my ornaments with silver and gold Sharpie paint pens.  It reminded me of doodling on middle school notebooks, but a whole lot more sophisticated.  With no "wrong way" to decorate them, the possibilities are endless.

I used extra gray burlap fabric that I already had as a simple tree skirt and swagged my Mexican souvenir antiqued mirror star light as the tree topper.

After an initial lack of holiday decorating motivation, I think I found my mojo.  All it took was a little clay and some Sharpies to make my tree really shine.