Embracing a “Trash to Treasure” mentality encourages so many creative juices for me. Someone else may have chosen to discard the item for a few dollars at a yard sale, but to me, I see a world of new possibilities.
When you decorate on a dime, it opens up the ability to re-vamp for different seasons, holidays and celebrations without breaking the bank. For me, one of the easiest areas to update is the fireplace mantel decor.
Since my walls are green (for now), I initially choose to accent the mantel with all white pieces. As I shared in my Frugal Mantel Decor post, all the above decor was easily found at yard sales and thrift stores, so it makes it so manageable and fun to mix and match varying looks.
For Christmas, I swapped out this mirror for the iron works piece, and I actually kept it on the mantel until a few days ago.
Last week, I wandered aimlessly around one of my favorite thrift stores, and saw this old shutter stacked in a corner priced at just $4.99. Broken into separate pieces, it obviously wasn’t doing the previous owner any good, but immediately, I knew it was perfect for my purpose.
So with only spending five dollars, and taking just five minutes out of my schedule, I took down the mirror, leaned the shutters on the mantel and a whole new look was born.
What I did took literally five minutes, and yes, there’s definitely more I could do, but I started. Sometimes we put off sprucing up our home decor due to time, but a few simple changes can really make a difference.
I’m still playing around with exactly how I want to accessorize the new fireplace mantel decor, but hopefully, it will inspire you to have fun with your mantel. Over the next 100 days (yes, it’s already the count down to Christmas), we have so many seasons and celebrations to help encourage us to switch up our mantel decor.
So what about you?
Do you decorate your fireplace mantel for the different seasons?
That’s rather funny, actually. I’ve been moving things around on my mantle almost constantly since the day we moved into this house, which will be 2 years ago this Sunday! I’m trying, for the life of me, to figure out how to decorate a very long mantle, as in the entire width of the room! Although, I have changed up the decorations for Christmas
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Me again. I forgot to mention in my last comment that I am SO loving your shutters! I need to “snag” some of those for myself. And on a different note, I am SO impressed. I don’t know what happened, but your blog is the second blog within the last five minutes I have been able to post a comment on. I haven’t been able to post a comment on anyone’s blog in about 1 1/2 months now!
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Try the shutters off-center, with a taller piece on the other side for balance. This will allow your “Believe” decoration to pop. You may also want to try standing the shutter instead of leaning it and/or opening the shutters.
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Jen Reply:
September 18th, 2011 at 9:49 pm
Thanks, those are all fun ideas. I literally bought it and stood it up…thus, the five minutes. 🙂 I definitely will spend some time experimenting this week.
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I envy the thrifty finds (such as these $5 shutters) I see on my favorite blogs (one of which is yours) because my local area already sees the value of something like this and would have had them listed for $25 or better! It looks great!
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Jen Reply:
September 19th, 2011 at 1:49 pm
Unfortunately, I think that is the trend in many, especially Goodwill. The prices for clothes at GW are great, household items GW now prices like it’s Target. I found these shutters at one of my faves, but it’s really quite a sketchy environment, so I think people avoid it. 🙂 I got it when it was marked 50% off, so it was a score, for sure.
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Habitat for Humanity’s Re-Store is a good resource for architectural salvage, both for decor and construction. Ours tends to run to newer stuff, but something like shutters would be there. I like to go over to Ohmega Architectural Salvage in Berkeley for inspiration (Muy $$$), and then hit the thrift/junk stores for actual purchasing. Also farm sales (like estate sales, but sometimes yard sales) and auctions are great resources if you don’t mind dirt and a few spiders.
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gorgeous! my husband brought home a can of white spray paint the other day and it is BEGGING me to get creative with it 🙂 thanks for the inspiration.
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