Colorful Mantle Display

If you’ve read my blog before, you might have been wondering why I never show pictures of my mantle. When I do include pictures of my fireplace, they’re always of the hearth, not the mantle. (See…)

Well, I’ve been hiding it from you, but the reason for that is because up until now the T.V. sat on the mantle. It was not cute. I loathed it. Serious loathing. I hated all of the awful cords hanging down the sides of the fireplace that I tried to cover up (impossible). I hated that I finally had a home with a built-in vintage fireplace and it couldn’t even look cute because an electronic monstrosity was taking over the focal point of the living room.

I tried to convince my twin sister (and roommate) that we didn’t need a T.V. I tried to convince myself. (I currently have an addiction to Netflix that needs to stop.) I tried to think of other places to put the T.V. At the time it seemed like there were no other options. The cable line was right by the fireplace. How would I move it? Every wall in my living room either has a door or a window on it, and the living room is super tiny overall. How could I possibly add another piece of furniture to hold the T.V. and also position the couch in front of it without taking up the entire living room? So, I gave up and just let the cords and T.V. drive me batty for almost two years.

Until now! I brought out an old dresser that was being used as storage in a closet and set the T.V. on it, managed to move the cable cord (that was a saga in itself), and with some clever rearranging made the furniture work. (More on the new arrangement in a future post.) My mantle is free! And, I have no idea why I didn’t do it before.

I need to make up for lost mantle-decorating time. Yes, I’m a decorating nerd. So, I decided to create a blog series where I’ll show off different ideas for decorating your mantle. I’ll only use stuff I already own to do it, so it’ll be a creativity challenge! Here’s the first one!