My Christmas Mantle

I found this fun little linky party over at alamode and knew I wanted to join the fun!

I have always loved decorating the mantle for Christmas. Growing up, starting around age 8 or 9, my "job" was to decorate our mantle for the holidays. My mom had a collection of brass candle sticks and bells that I would nestle in to a fake pine garland strung with white lights. I always felt so proud of it when I was done, and thought it looked so fancy. When the Mister and I bought our house I LOVED the fact that we had a fireplace and a mantle and I couldn't wait for Christmas to decorate. (Which was quite a ways a way since we moved in on Valentine's Day!)

While our tree is a "family tree" the mantle definitely has a theme: candy! You have already seen my peppermint wreath (a couple times now!) and it is for sure the star of the show, but the other little details are just as fun. Besides for the peppermint candy colors (red and white) I also lean towards the brighter green colors. (Dare I say it... lime!) Enough chit chat! Lets get to some pictures

Here's the whole shebang.

 

















Here's our stockings. I couldn't find stocking holders that I liked, so I semi-DIYed a set. Actually, I did find some at Pier 1 for $20 or so a piece, which I just couldn't do.So I got a set (of 2!) plain stocking holders and hot glued an oversized ornament to one, and a decorative present thing to the other. The total for this little project was about $15 for both! The large vase is filled with some red and white sequined filler balls that I got after Christmas one year. I found the large stack of presents near the green stocking at Shop-Ko (do other people have Shop-Ko?) for 50% off. There are other random candy ornaments that I have picked up at Target over the last two years. This year they had the green ones so I got a couple.

The base of the mantle. Those are our engagement pictures

I love these Santas. Someday they will probably become a centerpiece for our
holiday table.

We use this basket to hold the remotes and our iPod chargers.
I think I picked this up at Michael's.

The one problem with decorating the mantle at Christmas is that I get real sad in January when I put everything away. We don't really have anything that we keep up there year round to replace it with. That is something that I need to work on!

Do you decorate a mantle for Christmas?