Simple Christmas Mantel & Free Christmas Printable

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Well friends, it’s officially THE FIRST POST OF CHRISTMAS (said in my best Polar Express voice)!!!! Today I’ve teamed up with a bunch of blogger friends to bring you 18 Christmas Mantels and Vignettes hosted by Krista from The Happy Housie. You’ll notice that I fall into the “vignette” category, or as I like to call it, “the yearly game of ‘fake a mantel.'” Not having a fireplace was probably one of the biggest things I compromised on when we bought our house and a fireplace has been on the “to-do” list for eight years running now (and still counting) but I’ve found some clever ways over the years to fake the mantel and find a place to hang the stockings. As far as my 8 year old is concerned, we address the whole Santa chimney problem by mom just leaving the back door unlocked for him on Christmas Eve.
Anyway, last year the Christmas season started at our house on Halloween due to blog obligations and I was, no joke, taking down Christmas until like March. This year, with a new baby and honestly, just not an overwhelming desire to go Holiday-crazy (my husband refers to my Holiday-crazy as a “special brand of crazy, so trust me when I say that paring down is a huge step for me), I decided to go much simpler and have made a big effort to use what I had and not buy a whole lot. Is it just me, or do you find yourself spending a small fortune on decorations just to decorate for the most expensive time of the year?I did buy new stockings because I haven’t been loving ours for the last few years and of course we needed one for baby, so why not just replace them all, right? For the kids’ stockings, I found these cute little keychains on the Christmas aisle at Target that dress them up a bit, make them fun, and add a little “Anthro flair” for way less money.I cleared off the shelves a bit and then just added some faux garland (real is my favorite, but I just was up for spending the money or dealing with the mess this year) and some of my favorite decorative garlands I’ve found and made over the years (the white “MERRY” is just cardboard letters painted white and glued to gold string).

One of my favorite memories as a kid was pulling out the Christmas books every year, so we’ve amassed a pretty big collection of them over the years and try to read one each night in December. So I put a big basket at the bottom filled with all of our Christmas books–almost as good as reading by the fire

And finally, a little bit of Christmas humor sprinkled in. You can download the printable here: Free Christmas Vacation Printable

There are so many other beautiful Christmas mantels shared today, so be sure to click around and check out all of the Christmas goodness!

Shop This Post:

(most of my items were purchased in past seasons, so I’ve shared similar items here)

The Happy Housie / A Pretty Life / Place of My Taste / Two Twenty One / Newly Woodwards / Cherished Bliss

Lovely Etc. / Town and Country Living / All Things With Purpose / House by Hoff / My Fabuless Life / Lehman Lane

Green With Decor / The House of Wood / Fynes Designs / Bigger Than The Three of Us / Casa Watkins Living/ Blue I Style

 

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