SUMMER INTO FALL MANTLE

Okay, honestly this post should be titled Spring to Fall Mantle because I'm a very busy lazy person and I didn't ever change it from before. I've just left it up because, well, I decorate when I'm in the mood and I leave it alone when I'm not.

To prove my point, embarrassingly enough, I've left an Easter sign above the inside of my door since...well, Easter (duh). And when my husband looked at my decor last night he actually commented "Oh, is Easter over now? Cuz I see that you took the sign down finally." The Bastard. LOL. (You know it's bad when your husband actually notices the decor change or lack thereof.)

So, I started with taking down the Easter sign (YEA!) and taking down the Spring Summer Mantle:

This baby is ready and waiting for lovely Fall decor.

I first started by hanging my piece de resistance, my book wreath.

This lovely was a cinch to make, only cost me 2.50 and 1 hot glue gun burn. That's a small price to pay for such a pretty piece. I'll give instructions in a later post of how I did it.

Next, it was time to add in lovely fall touches. I knew i wanted this to cost nothing so I started by shopping in my own home by laying out everything fall related I had that I might use:

Then I started with the obvious-I wanted natural so I brought in some free cut twigs from outside. Since it's not really Fall here in Florida I had to actually strip the luscious leaves off the branches for this to work. I just placed them in a dollar vase (Dollar Tree-love that place) and filled with fake cranberries I already had.

So far so good.
Then I added balance to the mantle by placing a candle and my owl to the other side. The owl and candle picked up the light color of the wreath nicely.

But I wasn't liking all the cream on one side and that dark burgundy on the other. It made it off balance. So, I tried adding some leaves to the candlestick.

Meh. They are more orange than burgundy so they still didn't seem to balance it out for me.
So, I tried my ever faithful backup to decor--books.
Books are awesome because you can find them in every possible height, color, size, etc. which can really fill in a space.

That's much better. The maroon of the books play off the cranberries well. And I like the added height the books give the candlestick. But I still needed a lighter color on the other side to balance all that cream.

There we go. That's looking good. Now my eye travels in a very relaxed fashion across the whole and doesn't pause at some glaring corner. I also added a book to this side since it also pulled the colors of the owl out. The name of the book was awesome as a running theme:

 The only thing left was to add a little warmth in the way of fake garland (nothing says warm like some fake greenery right?)

And voila! A new seasonal mantle for next to nothing. It just makes me feel all warm and cozy now. Bye-Bye Easter!