My faux mantle...

 I love fireplaces. I love mantles. But in Florida it's just not feasible to have a fireplace. Thus, I couldn't possibly have a mantle (well, I could buy a faux mantle, but that would use up the 1 real wall we have).

Because I'm a total dweeb and lazy I didn't take pics of my living room but here's the basic layout:

See, it's an open floor plan -and I absolutely lurve it- but really, because of the great big window along the east wall, and the stairs, and the open bar to the kitchen I really only have 1 wall to work with. So, I don't really want to tie it up with a fire place mantle that, for all intents and purposes, would be useless.The wall is huge, since it goes up to our loft, which makes it a good 20 feet tall. And I had to do something with it. It's a massive blank space. I hate tons of clutter but whatever it was needed to be substantial enough to not look puny on this wall.

Because of the lovely girls on TheNest.com I found these:

 Empire West ceiling tiles. They're a nice size and I got 3 for FREE. Okay, well, I paid for shipping (about 9.00) and it was completely worth it. I get compliments on them.all.the.time. I've had them for a few years so I'm counting them as FREE for this particular project.

Then, I also found this shelf at my lovely bf's--Good Will (for 3.00!):

Here it is before painting:

And, to finish off my "look", I had this mirror:

Which, funnily enough, at first I hadn't even given it a second look because it came with this:

And I was so busy panting over how lovely it was (those legs!) that I barely noticed the mirror. I'm not a fan of the whole mirror/dresser combo so I detached it (I'll be refinishing the dresser later and I'll post pics).

Anyhow, after realizing I had a mirror just laying around I gave it another look and fell in love. It was sooo pretty and dainty with its beautiful curves (and nothing is more feminine than lots of curves-or so I keep telling myself).

So, after painting the shelf white, hem-hawing (an Oklahoma word I'm sure) over whether I should paint the mirror a lovely grey, deciding against it, and then having DH hang everything I was left with this:

Not too shabby. Oh, and just to get an idea about how big this wall is...you aren't seeing the 3 feet below and there is at lease 8 feet more above those lovely vents there.

 I might decide to paint the black tile white, for uniformity's sake, but really, my living room has a hodge-podge of finishes anyway (white, black, brown) as you can see from the wall here, so, perhaps I'll leave it.

Next, all I had to do was decorate the shelf. YEA! My favorite part.

So, for this I scrounged around the house for accessories and hit up Good Will (oh, how I love heem).And this was what I got:

My lovely milk glasses (2.00 for the big one, .50 for the little one), and the green glass apple (2.00) all thrift store finds. The books and clock I had.

And the cute little bird was from Old Time Pottery, only 2.50 because a wing was chipped.
So, there you have it. My quasi-make-shift faux mantle. It sits higher than a regular mantle (you can't tell in the pic) so if I want to push the couch on that wall it's no problem (I tend to rearrange my furniture-a lot!)

So, what do you think?