My Mantel Piece

I do love my mantel piece. I love my parent's house too but it doesn't have mantel pieces or window sills so these things are still, two years on, a bit of a novelty. I tend to use it as a place to showcase special occasions.

This is our mantel piece a year ago when we returned from honeymoon. Our families had saved us many of the sunflowers that were used for the wedding decorations and of course we had cards. It was lovely to have a memory of the wedding as we got back to 'real life' and went back to work.

I acutally thought that I had more photos of different displays on the mantel piece but I have only found two to show you so I shall have to make more effort to record them in the future. One thing I like to do is to have lots of little flower displays. I've collected lots of small vases, bottles and jugs so I can spread the flowers along the width of the mantel.

Here's the mantel last Christmas...

I used storm lanterns and vases to make a pretty outer layer of holly leaves, berries and dried orange slice that was protected from the candle inside. 'Tune in' tomorow to find out how I first did this for our wedding centre pieces.

I also got out my poisettia garland for the second year. I created the pattern for this myself, used yellow buttons for the centres and sewed the flowers to green cord.

Here's the fireplace. I collected fir cones and stuck them in the airing cupboard in a paperbag for a couple of days to dry them and open them out. The orange slices I dried my self over several evenings in the oven on a low heat. I also added cinamon sticks to the bowl to create that lovely seasonal smell. The penguin and snowman are also in their second year and were a real bargain from our £1 shop.