It was only last year right before Christmas that we finished building this mantel. Since this only our second Christmas with an actual mantel to decorate I was a little bit excited to decorate it this year. We’ve been slowly adding Christmas around the house, little touches here and there. The mantel took a little while to put together. I kept adjusting and moving things as I went along.

This year I knew I wanted to add a little element of my favorite Christmas movie of all time, White Christmas. The small trees that line the mantel are inspired by the movie’s “Snow” scene on the train where they create an impromptu winter scene with a blue scarf, white napkin and a few bottle evergreen trees.

No idea what I’m talking about? Here’s the clip from the movie.

I bought a package of green bottle brush trees and Buffalo snow blanket, laid the blanket on the mantel and cut it to size then I just placed my trees every so often on top of the snow. I tried to group them in odd numbers varying the size of the trees along the way. The PomPom garland I whipped up also made it’s way to the mantel.

Going with the classic theme poinsettias flank the stove along with the paperwhites that we planted just a couple of weeks ago which have been growing at a crazy fast rate. I feel like every time I walk out of the room and come back they’ve grown some. It’s been crazy and fun to watch them take off so fast.

I went back and looked at last year’s mantel I honestly hadn’t remembered what it looked like and I was a little surprised by how differently it looks. It’s fun to change things up every once in a while.

The mantel makes me smile every time I walk into the room so I would call that a blazing success. Has anyone else had time to deck their halls for the holidays yet? Do you start taking out your Christmas decorations like we do or do you wait a bit longer? I have friends who have a family tradition of putting everything up Christmas Eve.