When we bought the new house I got a lovely new double mantle to decorate! Trouble is, I don’t already own anything appropriate for decorating it. And I didn’t want to spend a ton of money on “mantle decorations”
So I kept my eyes open for a few weeks. Finally I found the following items at the dollar store: 2 glass vases, 2 glass “bowls”, 2 candles and 2 bags of rocks. Total: $8 plus tax.
I placed some rocks in each of the bowls and vases, then nestled the candles into the stones in each “bowl”. I placed one bowl on top of a vase.
When I made two, it looked to symmetrical on the mantle, so I took one of the bowls off and made a grouping on one side.
On the other side I put the vase/rock combo by itself, and I bought a small bunch of curly willow stick things (sorry, don’t know the official name) and stuck them in there on the other side. No picture of that right now. I did wind up swapping out the pretty maroon candles for some pale pink ones. The maroon had too strong of a floral scent.
For an Easter Variation, I poured out all the rocks, then re-assembled them with easter grass and easter eggs (Styrofoam) on the bottom and just grass and candles on the top. This cost me nothing because I had all of that in my Easter decorations box.
Yes, that is me with the camera in the background! The little ceramic egg house is part of my Easter Egg Village that I purchased in pieces from the Dollar store several years ago. I have 11 pieces.
I like that I can vary the contents of these “candles” with the season. They aren’t my perfect final solution, but they dress it up and give me a chance to shop around in a leisurely fashion for something “perfect”.
Anonymous says
Nice job!!! Annette
Mom2fur says
That came out really cute! Hey, thanks for stopping by and saying such nice things. Michael is a pretty cool kid, so I guess I did do something right, LOL!
Jenn @ Frugal Upstate says
Thanks guys! I was starting to think it was really ugly, as no one had commented on it at all.