We enjoyed partnering with At Home Stores to find creative ideas for holiday home decor!
It’s the same thing every year: I see lovely Christmas decorations that would be perfect to put on my mantle over the fireplace, except… I don’t have one. The mantle, that is. We do have two fireplaces at home, and while the one in the basement does have a mantle, the one upstairs does not. From a practical standpoint, this means no place to put family photos, beloved travel mementos, or even handy electronics. When the holidays roll around, this also means my decor is limited. What’s a gal to do?
With a trip to At Home Stores and a little creativity, I was determined to make my mantle-less fireplace still a nice focal point of our family room. The fireplace itself is nice… a traditional, floor-to-ceiling, red-brick fireplace that serves its purpose. We do have nice clock that we could hang up thanks to a sturdy screw the previous homeowners had left in one of the bricks, but that’s about it, decor-wise.
Eventually I may want to add a mantle to this fireplace, but with other “wish list” home improvement items taking priority, this keeps getting pushed back. The Christmas rolls around and again I wonder how can I “spiffy up” this area?
This year I decided to decorate with items that would be inexpensive, easy to put up, and wouldn’t require any special tools at all. Our son loves to help with these challenges, so we headed to the newest At Home Stores location in Northern Virginia, the one in Chantilly, for ideas. One thing we knew for sure is that we did NOT want to take down the clock. We do use it, and we wanted to incorporate any design around the clock, not in lieu of it.
Our initial idea was to put a very large wreath around it, and we were pleasantly surprised to see that At Home carried some as large as 48″ wide. Unfortunately the 36″ one might have been too small to go around our clock and its decorative hardware, and the 48″ was too large. There was also the question of how we would hang up the wreath, since we didn’t want to drill more screws into the masonry. Then we saw the garland section.
Immediately we realized that if we bought one of these, we could wrap it around the clock, securing it to its own frame, to make our own wreath. The choices we plentiful but we picked a classic style with evergreens, pinecones, and white and floral elements to help brighten up the room. We also chose a white and silver floral strand to run along the brick wall between the clock and the fireplace.
Again, we didn’t want to have to do anything special to hang this up. Luckily At Home Stores has these hooks you just push into the drywall. They go in easily, make only a tiny hole, and leave a small, but handy and sturdy (they hold up to 35 pounds!) hook. Since the garland has loops on both ends, it was up within seconds.
Finally, to pull the whole look together, I wanted some nice items to put along the floor. I wanted these decorations to be white to tie into both our “wreath” and the garland, and to brighten the area, standing out against the dark-red brick. My son and I found some fun, lightweight reindeer made of fabric and gold beads. I placed a table runner (that I already had at home) and put the reindeer on top.
In all, it took me maybe 30 minutes to set up everything and turn my mantle-less fireplace into a nice spot for holiday cheer. And the materials didn’t cost much: $30 for the thicker garland around the clock, $20 for the white and silver one, $30 for both reindeer, and maybe $5 for a box of the five hooks. This was the finished look:
We haven’t yet run our fireplace this winter, so I don’t yet know how it will look with a fire burning. In the meantime, though, we have a large candleholder, and when I lit those, I got a nice preview:
Do you have any ideas for super-easy but festive home decor? Share with your fellow readers in the comments below!
This post is sponsored by At Home Stores. We received these products and other compensation but the ideas are our own and the writing is original, prepared to inform our readers and give them fun ideas.
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