Mantle Project

Hi all!  I've been getting a lot of flack from some friends for not writing more lately.  I've been meaning to, pretty much every weekend, but it just seems like things got crazy busy!  The biggest reason for being so busy is that I got a second job.  I just don't make a ton of money being a teacher so I interviewed and was hired by Kohl's department store as a seasonal employee!  I was actually really excited and was placed in the jewelry department.  I love the people I work with and the company is extremely family oriented and places high value on customer and associate satisfaction.  The only bad thing is I was working 3 days a week, on top of teaching.  Talk about tired and extra stress!  Now since the holidays are over, I'm working less and breathing more.  And, able to write a blog post!


I grew up the country and my mom and dad had an old pump shed that housed their water pump.  If the weather ever got extremely cold, sometimes the pump would freeze and we'd have no water in the house.  So, my parents finally decided that since the shed was falling apart, they would bury the pump and demolish the shed.  I helped a little with the demo (yay for swinging hammers and crowbars and attaching tow ropes around walls and pulling them out with a car!) and noticed they had a few windows in tact sitting off to the side.  My mom said she didn't know what to do with them but it seemed a shame to throw them out.  I jumped at the chance and asked if she'd keep them for me since I knew I could do something with them (and that the shed had lots of memories from my childhood, including one with cleaning, swimming, and bees...my mom's favorite story to tell!).  She said sure and put them in a safe spot in our barn.  I took the smaller one with bigger "windows" home a week later to ruminate on its possibilities!

My window!

I was cruising around Pinterest and saw this pretty window frame with a picture behind it.  I liked how the frame looked shabby chic but I didn't want just one big picture.  I have a lot of 4x6 pictures in an album from our wedding.  I don't have a lot of frames to display them and while they're nice in an album, I really love our pictures and want people to be able to appreciate them!  I wanted them suspended so I thought about how I wanted to do that inside each smaller frame.  I decided on clear photo corners from Hobby Lobby.


First, I chose all the photographs I wanted in the window.

  I then laid them out on the back of the window, using a ruler and a dry erase marker to mark exactly where I wanted them to be.  I then grabbed my clear photo corners and started carefully sticking them on!  It was hard to get a good picture of them but here's what I got.

 

 Photo corners :)

Since I had already set the photos where I wanted them, it was just a matter of sticking the photos in each set of photo corners!  Easy peasy.

Voila!  All finished.  :)  

The kitten was decidedly interested in the mantlepiece and got in my pictures.  :)

I set it up on my mantle and was thoroughly pleased with the result.  I love that all of my favorite pictures are up on display.  Everyone who comes over seems to really like it!  I hope you do too!

 Normal decorations

Christmas decorations!

It was super easy to make!  Hope it helps you get some creative juices going.  Have a wonderful day!