Rustic and Simple Christmas Mantle

My Rustic and Simple Christmas Mantle

I hope you all are having a great December so far.This year I decided I was going to scale down on my decorating and I am sticking to my promise. But when I saw this cool chalkboard printable at dearlillie.com It sparked a bit of inspiration.

So I got it on her black Friday sale, had it printed at Staples and then I made the frame myself out of 1X4s! Yay me!

I didn't have my handy husband help. I'm so proud of myself. Can you tell?

So anyway, if you want to see how to make your own head on over to Dear Lillie

to see how she makes this cute frame.

I wanted a rustic mantle and this is what I have so far.

I am planning on adding a branch stocking holder, but it's still in the works as are the stockings.

So basically I made the chalkboard frame according to her instructions, then I gathered a piece of burlap with a thread (I'm no sewing person btw) and just weaved the needle and thread in and out until I had this.

Simple. Inexpensive. Pretty.

To add a little more to the display, I simply used my old shutter, rusty bucket with greenery and this new to me -vintage ice skates!

I had been on the lookout for ice skates for a loooong time.

I finally scored them while junking.

They were brown and tattered and looked pretty bad.

I simply painted them with my Old Ochre Chalk Paint I had on hand. Then I painted the soles, black with home made chalky paint and last, I painted the rusty blades with some metallic silver paint I had (Martha Stewart).

Voila! Cute, distressed skates!

The old shoelaces were yucky and black so I'm looking around my house for some white ones :)

I then wrapped up some small presents using a downloaded french script printable and tied them with some brown ribbon.

What do you think?

Are you scaling down this Christmas?

I love the simplicity of it after spending hours decorating that darned 9 ft tree and making the burlap, tree skirt.

What treasures have you come across this week?

I'd love to hear it in my comments.

xoxo

Patty

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