Christmas Mantle in the New House!!

I cannot believe how long it's been since I last posted!
I just opened a new post and happened to glance at the date of the last one and my heart jumped! 

I don't know if I've ever ever every gone that long between posts before. 

And that's saying something considering I feel like I've had some pretty crazy busy moments in life. 

But this one just did me in. 

Between having a tiny toddler running around, work, holidays & moving, I've been one exhausted mama. 

We did a lot of moving on the weekends and in the evenings since me & the hubs didn't feel like we should days off work (considering we took off to run to NYC for a minute already!). So my nights & weekends were so insanely packed it wasn't funny.

The past week has been the first week where I feel like I've actually been able to breathe a little.

We actually spent the weekend doing some things that we WANTED to do- shopping, taking the kids to see Santa...some fun things :) 

So slowly but surely I feel like I'm coming up for air after this crazy move. 

We have tons unpacked but between painting, getting a wall put up & getting christmas decor out, I feel like I still have a million things to do. 

The house is feeling more like OUR house though & that's super exciting. 

Anywho. 

I HAVE missed you guys & the blog so much. I promise to try and get better with things around here :)

I figured that after such a long break, it's only appropriate to come swinging back in with none other than a mantle post.

Because besides wreaths, decorating my mantle is my favorite thing to post about!!

We have lots of small updates to the house that we want to do and I have some smallish plans for our mantle/fireplace area, but it's still beautiful even right now so I was so excited to decorate it for the first time!!

I didn't have time to go all DIY crazy and do lots of new projects so it's a smattering of old pieces & a couple of new bought pieces. I did make one new piece but it didn't turn out the way I wanted it to in my head but it'll do for this year :) 

Check out our decking of the mantle for this Christmas: 

My absolute favorite thing about the new house is all the gorgeous molding everywhere.

I'm a bit of a molding freak...it's just the gorgeous icing to an already beautiful canvas. 

And there's such gorgeous molding on this fireplace. 

I'm not crazy about the tile but it's pretty enough for now :) 

This mantle is quite a bit smaller than our old one so I've had to adjust a bit on how I set things up but it's plenty wide enough for my layered displays that I love so much!!

The new DIY piece this year is the 'Blessings Fall Like Snowflakes' piece. 

I had big plans for this guy and it fell  a little short of the end result I was wanting and I didn't have the time or patience to fix it yet...I"ll get to it eventually. But at the moment, it does it's job :)

I used a weathered frame I had whipped up for something several years ago- in the move, it got piled in my 'workroom' and I felt like it finally needed to come out and shine for a bit. 

I painted the backing blue, added gold snowflakes, a vinyl saying & some twinkle lights for a fun 'marquee light' effect. 

I wasn't crazy with the end result but I ended up liking it a million times better when I layered the chunky white frame on top of it. 

The battery already died for the lights so that was a bummer. So no lights in the pictures :/ 

The gorgeous oversized snowflakes on the side of the mantle were some beautiful DIY pieces that the hubs made for me last Christmas as a surprise. 

It was actually one huge snowflake but it came apart during the move & I loved having two of them so I left them for now. 

They were perfect for adding some weathered charm to my snowflake setup. 

The gold deer head is my new item of the year from Michaels. I'm kinda obsessed with him. 

I love, love, love seeing all of our cute stockings hanging in the new house!!

They fit perfectly across the middle of the fireplace- I made them last year when we added Baby M to the mix. They were plain burlap stockings until I added some fun trim & monogrammed our names on them. 

The wooden faux  barn door is from my spring/summer mantle and it was just set next to the mantle when we were pulling all kinds of things out of boxes and just happened to stay there. I really loved having another layer of decor on the bottom so it just worked itself into Christmas decor :) 

I layered my cotton ball wreath, a wooden snowflake & a burlap tree with it to give it some Christmas spirit. 

I also added a wooden ammo crate with a comfy blanket on the other side of the fireplace. 

Adds all kinds of coziness in! 

The white cabinet door, 'Merry & Bright' sign & rag garland have all been recycled from years past. 

I still love all the pops of red admist the neutral & blues. 

We went very simple with Christmas this year so I wouldn't feel so overwhelmed with decorating when we still aren't all the way unpacked. 

I decided the mantle, the Christmas tree & the entryway were top priority this year. 

I added a little Christmas to the foyer area too just for when you first walk in...

And besides a few frames & garlands spread throughout the house, that's pretty much all I've done this year. 

I can't wait to completely deck out everything next year but for now, I"m just enjoying the simplicity of a few things out. 

We still have all the magic of twinkling lights and the Christmas-y feel to the home...just on a smaller scale. And I'm learning to be okay with just making progress at the moment :)

I hope you guys are having a wonderful holiday season so far this year...I'll try to pop in more before Christmas but no promises :) 

Thanks for popping by and listening to me ramble. I hope you enjoyed my little bit of Christmas so far!!

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