Snow Birds Winter Mantel

Brrr! It’s cold outside!  Winter has officially arrived and in celebration of this wonderful cold, crisp, snowy season I have created a winter mantelscape! :)

I kept some elements from the Christmas mantel and layered around them: pinecone wreath followed by the white feather trees, plus the pinecone trees from upstairs, candlesticks and snowflakes, and front and center I put my new snow birds that I got for Christmas.  (Thanks Molly!)  And below I hung a pom pom garland.  Isn’t it cute?

I think the feather trees were clearly made for this arrangement.  They were crying out for some symmetry, so I provided. :)

And the little snow bird ornaments fit right in with the display with their furry white feathers and pinecone wings. :)  Cute cute!

Now if only we would get some snow! 

Hope you are enjoying this wintery weekend! 

Giftwrap Organization

It’s that time of year… time to clean and organize after the Christmas chaos!  I am trying to get back to a clean slate and put away all the decorations in an orderly manner.  So I thought to organize my giftwrap in a clever new way.

My closet under the stairs is where I keep all the gift boxes, bags, wrap and bows.  Last year I showed you how I had added shelves in the back and stashed all my paraphernalia in bins.  The giftwrap was stacked in a tall hamper. 

Well that was working fine, until I came across this on Pinterest:

My closet is super deep so I couldn’t mount shelves on the back wall, and I didn’t actually have any of those wire shelves, but I did have a bunch of tension rods!  So, I created my own version of this storage idea:

This is the simplest thing EVER!  I just snapped the tension rod in place against the wall and the edge of my shelf.  You just have to pull it out far enough from the wall for the fattest roll of paper to fit behind.  Then I organized all my wrapping paper standing up behind the rod.  It works for short, tall, thin and fat rolls equally. They are super easy to get in and out when you need one, plus you can easily see all your options.  Genius!  Now I have reclaimed all that floor space that I was using by standing a hamper in there. 

Now I’m on a roll!  (haha) Off to organize more things! :)