Metallic (Goodwill!) mantel

Hello everybody! How was your weekend? We celebrated my Bub’s 7th birthday yesterday – SEVEN! I still can hardly believe it, he was just my sweet baby the other day. (I guess he’ll always be, whether he likes that or not.)

Anyway, we have a big Christmas decor tour starting today – my friend Chris at Just a Girl is coordinating a Christmas tour of homes this week with nearly 25 talented bloggers showing off their holiday homes. I’m sharing mine on Wednesday and my house is far from done. Guess what I’m doing today? :)

So I did get the mantel done this weekend, and I absolutely LOVE IT. I started by placing my big fluffy garland up there, like always, and stood back…and it was just too much. I wanted something simpler this year.

So I thunk. And stood in front of my stuff in the storage room. And thunk some more. And stared, till it came to me. I grabbed the glass containers I decorated for Christmas a few years ago and started placing them on the mantel.

The candleholders (just glass from Goodwill over the years) were all silver so I needed to pull in some gold to work with our mirror. (I’m getting lazier smarter as I age and wanted to just leave that there – I don’t want to have to move everything out to decorate for the holidays!) I found a bunch more of the glass containers in my stash (apparently I’ve been hoarding them) but needed to cover them. I got an idea to look through my wrapping paper -- score! I found this gorgeous, PERFECT, faux bois paper I had picked up at HomeGoods months ago:

Ugh. Perfect. It had the gold and touches of silver to tie in the other paper. I was never planning to use it as wrapping paper by the way – I always knew I’d find a use for it otherwise. I do this often.

I traced the shape of the glass on there, cut it out, then used double-sided tape to secure it:

I had to run to the craft store to grab a couple more pieces of the silver scrapbook paper to finish off my collection, and then I filled in the empty spots with greenery and pinecones:

It is so simple, really. Wrapping the paper around will take you some time, but it’s SO easy and so dang cheap. The extra scrapbook paper I had to get was on sale, so I spent $2 to finish it up.

I really love how it turned out:

It’s elegant and simple, and it lets the mirror shine. My fluffy garland made the mantel feel squatty and small. This opens it up quite a bit:

I used a combo of real tea lights and my fake candles/votives. I’ve had lit it all up every day and night since I finished.

The last few days have been cloudy and dreary and it looks so pretty, even during the day. But it truly shines at night:

I say this every year, but don’t be surprised if the mantel still looks like this in February. ;)

I love it that much:

Every one of those glass containers I've picked up at Goodwill. Well, actually I think I got a few from Hobby Lobby years ago for this table centerpiece. But most are from Goodwill over the years. I found the hobnail votives there a couple years ago too. (See how I used them for a fall tablescape here.) The few mercury votives are from Target and other stores over time.

The past couple of years I’ve used more and more real greenery to decorate for the holidays. You need to spray it every day or two (or not…sometimes I forget) to keep it from drying out but I love the way it looks and love that I don’t have to store it year to year. :)

Do you have a mantel or vignette you like to change up every year during the holidays? You can see my past mantels (and see how this space has changed over the years) here, here and here.

To Goodwill or not?

Hello there! How are ya?

So I sometimes dig my heels in on stuff when everybody else does it…it’s just my thing. I will avoid something that is super trendy just because it’s…well, super trendy. :) The same went for Instagram – it took me forever to get on the bandwagon but I gotta say I have enjoyed it. It’s fun to share snippets of stuff throughout the day, especially when I’m out and about shopping.

Some interesting conversations have started up on some photos, and the other day was no exception – it got me thinking:

The Bub and I popped into Goodwill before an appointment the other day and I gotta say…some of the prices were a little shocking. ;)

I am and will always be a thrifty girl, but you may have noticed I’m not the Goodwill shopper I used to be. That’s for a few reasons – I just don’t have the time for it like I used to. The kiddo is getting older, the blog is getting bigger and to find the goodies at Goodwill you need to stop in often. I use to stop by one two or more times a week and lately I just haven’t made the time.

When you stop in once every three months it’s hard to find the deals. ;) And when I used to go a lot and I would find fun stuff and it would come home with me and sit. And sit. (Forever.) Because I couldn’t pass it up of COURSE! And there’s only so much time in the day to transform things so the items would take up space in our house and in my head. I finally had to come to terms with it and STOP.

This Goodwill stool I redid with Annie Sloan paint had sat in my garage for a least a year before it got painted:

You see, when you find a deal at Goodwill you have to buy it NOW or it will be gone when you come back – at least 90 percent of the time. And I had a lot of buy-it-nows cluttering up my house. :)

When our stores changed their return policy (you just get a credit back now), that also changed how often I shopped there. If I can’t just return it I won’t buy as much, plain and simple.

But the biggie is that Instagram photo up there – when I have stopped in over the past year or so some of the prices have been shockingly high. The response to that pictures was much of the same – many of your have noticed it as well.

Now PLEASE don’t get me wrong – I used to work closely with our Indiana Goodwill’s and truly believe in their mission and believe they do GOOD work. They provide hundreds of jobs for those who may not be employed otherwise. I also understand the price of everything goes up over time.

But every time I’ve walked through lately I am shocked by a price tag on more than one item. I laugh about it because I wonder if blogs have a little to do with it – over the past five years or so more people are seeing the value in transforming something old or worn and making it work in their home.

I don’t know what it is really, I’ve just noticed the prices have gone up considerably. Target sells some of their extra items to Goodwill and I’ll sometimes see prices at there for higher than you can get it on clearance at Target.

So…in a nutshell that’s why I’ve moved more towards antique malls and Craigslist over the years to find most of treasures. I find at antique stores you don’t have to worry quite as much about an item being gone…I’ve left many things and come home to think about them and they are still there when I return.

Craigslist is nice because when I want something specific I can search for it over time and wait for the right piece and price.

There are still a few go-to items I visit Goodwill for, of course. I love to use books when decorating and end up picking some up from Goodwill occasionally. I always find books I would actually read but it doesn’t hurt to find a pretty one. ;)

I picked up a few coffee table-style books to fill in the library built ins:

And of course Goodwill is always great for frames, although even with those you have to watch the price lately. I love that I can find so many different styles and sizes all in one spot. I found a big one for the basement here and had a few on hand from Goodwill for the kitchen chalkboard:

And most of the frames in my office were collected at Goodwill over time (and then painted white):

I love that they look like just that – collected.

So are you still a Goodwill shopper? Never was? If you are, have you noticed the difference in price over the past year or so like me? I will continue to shop there and support their mission…just not quite as often as I used to.

**To see more of my Goodwill transformations, go here.