Burlap Garland and Christmas Mantel

Hello everybody! I had an awesome lesson learned this weekend. 1. Babies will eat anything. 2. Glass ornaments and babies do not mix. 3. Apparently the red ones are the best tasting. Yep. The babe decided to eat a red glass ornament. She bit right down into it like an apple. The hubs woke me up screaming to come help him; I ran into the kitchen to find her mouth full of blood and glass. That's something you don't want to wake up to. So, we spent the morning in the ER checking up on her. Luckily, the lacerations in her mouth healed quickly, and they couldn't see anything in her system. We got sooo luckily. That could have gone wrong in so many ways.

And now because of this, my tree is lacking some red on it. I immediately came home and took off all the glass ornaments. I knew when putting them up they were some what of a danger, so I put them high...I thought out of reach. I figured the worst that would happen is her grabbing one (if she could reach it) and bang it on the floor or something. Didn't think at all about her trying to eat it :( . You live, you learn and then hope you don't experience something like that again.

This story...somehow...leads me to my Christmas mantel. I guess there's red lacking there...that's the tie in :) I tried to add some red but it was looking silly so I decided to just keep a little bit of red on the balls on the ends and call it good. The hubs says it's too beige-ish though. Oh well...you would think he would be used to this kind of thing by now :) At least it's not all white like last year.

I decided to bring in some natural elements with the pine cones and wreath but still have a little sparkle with the glass and silver stocking holders.

A few years ago, I used lit garland on the mantel, which I loved but haven't done it for awhile. I didn't have any garland on hand this year but I did have some burlap, so I decided, hey why not have burlap garland? I just wove it through the stocking holders and secured it on the end with a cute burlap flower I found at Hobby Lobby.

I also changed up my stockings since I showed you my living room last week. I was on a mad search for reasonably priced cable-knit stockings but couldn't find any. So, I decided to make my own..again. This time out of old sweaters. Not cable-knit, but I still like them :) I'll have a tutorial on this in an upcoming post.The hubs doesn't like them...he says they look too much like real stockings :) I think that's why I like them so much. They aren't fussy looking...just kind of relaxing :)

I love how this mantel looks with my redecorated bookshelves. It just seems so cozy :)

 This is the second time I have changed this mantel this year...hopefully the last time :) I hate it when you decorate something and just aren't happy with it. I think I'm at the happy stage with this one. Now on to decorating my dining room :) ...we'll see if that really gets done lol.