Happy fall ya'll! I hope you are all enjoying the cooler weather and changing colors. I love so many things about fall! The cool brisk air, a warm cup of cocoa, the changing colors and falling leaves, football season and of course another opportunity to change up the decor a little bit.
Although we hadn't planned on posting anymore until our "real" blog is officially ready to be unveiled, I just had to give you a little sneak peak at what I've been up to around here.
Enter my fall mantle.
Isn't the chalkboard printable fabulous? This beauty is from one of my very favorite sources, the Caravan Shoppe. It's part of a Thanksgiving set called 'All Chalked Up'. This set comes with everything you need to decorate your home and host a stylish Thanksgiving fete. It comes with 3 large quote posters, a large 'Gobble, Gobble Turkey' poster, printable placemats and circle art that could be used for napkin adorning, stickers for take home boxes or anything else your heart desires. It's adorable and I had to have it. The entire set costs $5 and the digital file is sent to your email address immediately after purchasing. Purchase once and print off as many times as you want. Although there are many free printables available on the internet and all over Pinterest, with items from the Caravan Shoppe I know the quality is incredible and the file size is specially made for printing extra large prints so I won't have to worry about quality at that size. Plus, I just love their style! I can spend hours perusing Pinterest for just the right fall print or I can hop on over to The Caravan Shoppe and likely find just what I'm looking for in the click of a button. The print above is the medium size engineer print that I previously posted about here. I printed it at Staples for $3.69 and placed it in one of my favorite thrift store frames (Isn't she a beauty too? For $15.00 she was all mine. After a little happy dance in the aisle). Look for a future post on all the in's and out's of engineer prints coming soon.
Here's a little close up of this not so little beauty.
Swoon.
Sigh.
Moving on.......
Here is a closer look of my fall mantle.
You may notice several items from my Halloween decor post here making a reappearance in my fall mantle. The yarn bottles, wrapped books and white vase are all being re-purposed for this vignette. That's what we're all about here at Like Mother Like Daughter Blog. We believe that good design doesn't have to be expensive. Shopping your own home, re-purposing items from other rooms and carefully selecting thrift store finds can achieve a designer look for a fraction of the cost! Look for a future post on how to decorate a mantle or side table with lots of tips on how to achieve balance and visual interest. For today I will just give you the basics of what I did for this particular mantle. First off, start out with something that you love....your focal point. You will build your mantle around this key item. For me it was obviously the 'Give Thanks' print. Next I began to place other items in fall colors that complimented one other. I used items of varying heights to create balance.
Next to the yarn covered wine bottles is a small wooden bowl I found at a thrift store. I dry brushed it with a mustard yellow craft paint and lightly sanded in some places for that chippy, distressed look.
In the center of the mantle are my little thrift store books covered with painters paper. For my fall mantle I changed them up a little by wrapping with twine and threading a few tares of wheat through the twine. Nested on top and to the side of the books are one of my favorite thrift store finds of the month. I picked up these little babies for $.65 each. I adore them. They make me giddy.
The right side of the mantle displays a white vase filled with small sticks and fall leaves. I pulled these from my yard but I will be honest, they have to be changed about every 3-5 days or they start looking a little........well........dead. I have plenty of leaves and branches in my yard that need to be trimmed so I will be supplied throughout the fall, but you may want to take the easy route and go fake. Shhh! Don't tell the decor police that I'm encouraging fake foliage. I hear it's a cardinal sin, but I'm a rebel like that.
Once all my larger items were in place I filled in the gaps with natural elements and textures. With the exception of the pine cone from my yard and the one squash in the last photo, all the other small elements were purchased together in a wicker cornucopia from a thrift store. I knew I likely wouldn't use the cornucopia but $1.50 for all the dried fall accents was a deal I couldn't pass up. I seem to have a lot of those deals I can't pass up don't I? Don't answer that. It was a rhetorical question.
One last look.
Thanks for stopping by!
Linking up to:
