Our house doesn’t present too many challenges (despite my usual complaining to the contrary).  It has a great open floor plan with very few things that really need “fixing”.  I always struggle with decorating our family room mantle though.  It presents so many challenges for me.

Challenge 1: The height.  One of the things I loved/love most about our house is the 2 story family room.  But with the two story family room comes a very tall space to fill above the fireplace.

Challenge 2: The framing.  The builders of our house didn’t choose to put in the gorgeous stone above the fireplace but, instead put up moulding that created frames up to the ceiling.  It kind of puts an end to hanging anything above the mantle.

Those challenges caused me to quake in fear at the thought of decorating my mantle.  Seriously, I would practically break out in hives from the “stress”.  When we first moved in, I shoved some bamboo filler into a plain glass vase and it has lived there ever since.

Exciting, right?  Yeah, not really.  It’s ok…I know.
Inspired by all of the beautiful fall decorations I’ve seen while cruising (and partying) around the web, I decided to take action.  Like a lot of my projects, I didn’t really have a plan in mind but knew I wanted to do something.
I carved out about 30 minutes of shopping time on the way home one day and hit my usual trifecta of places

I pretty much went in and grabbed anything that looked like it might work.  Then, I went home and “shopped” what I already owned too.
Supplies gathered; I started putting random things on the mantle and giving them a 15 minute grace period.  If I still liked it after 15 minutes, it stayed.  If not, it went into the reject pile.

My first attempt didn’t feel like it was tall enough OR filled up the mantle quite like I wanted.  More changes.

I changed and changed and changed until I was satisfied.  I added a taller mirror (already owned) and, even though it isn’t 100% the style I wanted, it fills up the space better.

I also added an additional candle holder and candle thanks to a suggestion by Junior.

I switched out one of the pumpkins for a larger one.

Finally, I was done tweaking (at least for now) and stayed with

And yes, that is the same bamboo that was there before but changed up a little. Oh, and you can see how much of a hurry I was in when trying to get this together (it was a “while dinner cooks project”) because I forgot a tag on one of the pumpkins. Oops!
A few details of some of the items up there for fun:

How is your mantle looking these days? Have a lot of fall decorating happening? My next room to tackle for fall will be the dining room!

Partying at:
The Fall Ya’ll Link Party at The Lettered Cottage