My Mantle

The past few weeks months, I've been working on getting my living room decorated.  I'm one of those people who has a hard time getting abstract, theoretical ideas into concrete results.  And when it comes to decorating, I'm even worse than usual.  I don't know why.

Confession:  I never had a nursery ready for either of my kids.  Am I a terrible mom or WHAT?!

Just to give you an idea of how slow I am, I've been working at decorating this 1750 sq. foot apartment for almost a year.  Yes.  A year. I started with the easy projects:  the bathrooms.  Both kids' rooms are far from finished and the same is true for my room.  But hey, all three bathrooms look great. :|

Anyway, the living room is finally coming together.  YAY!  I'm so proud of the work I did, even if it wasn't very much.

Let's start with the mantle, shall we?

We didn't have a fireplace in either of the first two places we lived, so finding stuff to go on a mantle was totally foreign to me.

I had been seeing DIY hurricane vases around the blogosphere and Pinterest, so I decided to try it.  I bought the stems from Dollar Tree and the vases from Walmart (DT had ones that were cheaper, but they were SO narrow).  I really like how they turned out.

So a week or two went by with those two hurricane vases sitting alone with the picture.

Then I decided I needed some framed printables.  I found a quote on iShare Printables and loved the design, so I went with it, changing the color to match my awesome blue couch.  I designed the second, smaller printable myself, making it match the first one and using one of my favorite literature quotes.

To complete the mantle, I got that super cute L as a hostess gift from my sister-in-law's baby shower.  I thought it went perfectly.  I'd still like to see some greenery, but I suck at arranging things, so I don't think I'll try it.

Stay tuned to see my gallery wall -- the most amazing Pinterest-inspired thing I've ever attempted!