Cozying up the Mantel

I finally put away Christmas this past weekend, and the house was looking a bit bare.  It was a wee bit too early to be putting out Valentine's Day decor(it's not even MLK Jr. Day yet,) so I thought I'd do a nice winter mantel.  A winter mantel can be hard, because you don't want it to look like you just forgot to take down Christmas, so red is out.  At first I thought I'd go the blue and white snowflakes and snowmen route, but there's plenty of that outside, and inside I wanted something cozier.  Like flannel cozy.

I grabbed a couple of flannel scarves from my front hall closet(which I'm still working on making beautiful) to lay across the mantel and soften it.  I grabbed the double runner skates that I showed you outside my house at the entry here during my Christmas Home Tour, and removed the red bow and placed them on the mantel.

The brick is rough enough to grab the laces so they look like they're hanging from something.  Wonder what's under the skate in the back?

Legos.  What can I say?  The rest of you ladies have decorative boxes.  I have Legos.  Initially I just placed the skates on the mantel.  It didn't look right so I did a quick glance around and spied one of the Lego boxes.  Luckily we have so many of those little plastic bricks, I could use a few and the boys will never notice they're missing.  It only took a minute to make this little riser and the one on the other side of the mantel.  Most of the Legos are from when CG was a boy, and the sound of me rustling in the Legos box drew him out of his office just like I was blowing on the pied piper's flute.  He's such a kid.

For the middle of my mantel, I grabbed a long narrow basket, filled it with floral foam and topped it off with some moss.

I trudged out in the snow and culled some branches from the woods and sprayed them white.  I wanted them to look snowcovered, so I wasn't real fussy about covering them completely.  This is the spray paint I used.

After spraying each branch, I quickly brought it inside and sprinkled on some glitter.

I used a white glitter vs a metallic, because I wanted it to sparkle subtly like new fallen snow not shine like a Vegas showgirl.  The effect was pretty much impossible to capture with my mediocre photo taking skills, but trust me it sparkles in real life.

I found a pair of onyx candlesticks at an antique store years ago and felt they'd be a perfect addition to my natural, cozy, winter mantel.

I added a paper bunting that I made just like the Thanksgiving one I made here.  And here's my winter mantel in its entirety.

Thanks for popping in and checking out My Winter Mantel.  I'm linking this up to The Stories of A to Z's Winter Mantel Party.