Dream Snow - Day 6

How to decorate a Christmas mantle.

I admit that I have a fascination with pinterest. It is interesting to me to see what other people like. I especially like to see what people show interest in as far as holiday decorating goes. One thing that I have learned is that apparently how you decorate your mantle for Christmas speaks volumes about who you are as a person, in much the same way that how you decorate your home lets people know you are a nice person who was not raised by wolves.

Many people just hang their stockings on the fireplace and call it done. All Pinterest evidence clearly indicates that this is very sad and depressing. I suspect there are help groups for those people. Maybe some sort of 12 step program. I can proudly say that Kat and I have never hung stockings over our fireplace mantle. Mostly it is the very last holdout of Kathleen’s in her ongoing battle against santa. But whatever the reason, clearly we are better than those other people who do that.

Some pinterest people get creative with garlands. Who knew that tulle, glitter, and lights were so versatile in the garlanding world? Don’t think for an instant that those would be your only option. I saw one pinterest person had gone full on gingerbread house and made garlands of marshmallows. I saw that and two things came to mind. #1 is that she probably has ants, and #2 if she starts inviting random children over I suspect she ends up shoved into an oven. We have hung garland from our mantle. A few years when we did not do trees, we had garland that I hung Kat’s lace angels from. One year instead of hanging the evergreen garland, I just laid it out on top of the mantle for a different look. *I may or may not have intended to hang it, but then didn’t and when people got there played it off like it was deliberate.

Putting jars or bowls of Christmas ornaments or fresh fruit are some other options for mantle decorations. Personally I think this look might be saying, “Oh crap I give up, I’m just setting this stuff here until I get a chance to put it where it goes” instead of “I carefully thought out where I wanted to set these to showcase my house in a thoughtful manner that says I care about who you are as a person, and also I like small woodland animals.” I feel like it is important to note that people leaving punch cups of eggnog on my mantle does not qualify as decorations.

For a few years in OKC I creatively incorporated our annual kids ornament party with my holiday mantle decorating. Whatever the kids made at the ornament party I used to decorate the mantle, and then the kids could take their ornaments when they came to the party. We had metallic glitter ornaments one year. Another year we had mini whitewashed snowflakes. Sometimes I got really clever and tried to tie the ornaments into some theme for the party. For example, the year my invitation referenced The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe I came up with this very creative mini wardrobe project that looked like a painted wardrobe on the outside and when you opened the door had a secret picture inside. Then I had 8 or so of these tiny wardrobes on the mantle along with Christmas cards and candles. The children and I were pretty pleased with how it looked. That is until a guest at our party started asking why I had made the bold choice to decorate with tiny outhouses.

I bet no one has ever put that on pinterest.