Valentine's Day Mantel

First, there were the LOVE glasses. Then came the felt and burlap banner. Now I have finally added the finishing touches to make the Valentine's-y mantel complete. Once again, I had to face my nemesis: the tv mounted oh-so-low, leaving me with hardly any room for decorations. BOO. But I managed to do a couple fun things...

Gah. That monster of a TV is my worst nightmare. If I could do it over again, I'd either get a smaller TV (although Hubs would COMPLETELY disagree, I'm sure!), or actually, as much as I love the coziness of our electric fireplace from the months of October-February, what I'd really like is an awesome long one-of-a-kind dresser, with some place to hide the cable box, DVD player, etc (which are now in a table to the right of the fireplace). But back to the decor...

MORE felt rosettes. I have to say, if I don't make another felt rosette for as long as I live, it'll be too soon! No, they're worth the time (and hot glue gun burns), because I do think they are SO stinkin' cute, but man, can they take a while! I actually watched a couple shows I had DVR-ed the other night while I cut and spiraled away. If you missed how to make these rosettes, you can check out the steps here, on an earlier post.

I am almost embarrassed about how I made this next project. Remember in that post about the rosette ball, how I had glued them onto a floral foam ball? Welp, didn't have any more, and couldn't exactly leave my napping babes to run out and get some - so I had to take some extraordinary measures...

Let me explain what's going on in this picture. You see that pink ball on the right? They're those plastic balls, you know, that fill those ball pits, and we have only about a bazillion of in our playroom. So yes, I stole two, but realized they weren't going to be quite big enough...so I rigged that sucker with a few paper towels (I'm assuming newspaper, an old rag, anything would work), and taped it on there. Yes, with painter's tape because I have a problem finding masking tape whenever I need it, but painter's tape, well, that's ALWAYS around in this house;). It worked perfectly, and actually got me thinking, you could probably even make a ball, with some bunched up newspaper and tape, and forgo stealing toys from your kids...? Hmmm...

So that plastic pink ball went from this to this:

Ha! And I can assure you, my kids won't even know they're two balls short;). I decided to pick up a couple of those mini pots from Michaels (in the picture above), and spray paint them white, and wrap a piece of festive ribbon around it...

Oh, and just curious, does anyone else use their dining room table as a craft table, or am I alone in this one?

Better get that cleaned up before dinner! Glue and spaghetti, anyone?

So that's pretty much it, since you saw my L-O-V-E glasses and my banner already. I just added some pics and that's about it.

That's Hubs and me, both in second grade in these shots - he gave me these in a frame years ago, and I think we look cute in the middle of the mantel there;)

Plus it hides the big ol' SAMSUNG word on the TV. Gotta love strategically placed decor.;)

And I also put one of my favorites of our babies up here:

Our boy in a sea of pink, up in his sister's room...story of his life;) Thought with the pink shag rug, and my daughter's pink shirt, it would look all Valentines-y.

So after I took these pics, I was kinda wondering if the topiaries would look better on the ends?

What do you think?


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I linked this up at Decor Chick!