2014 Valentine’s Day Mantel

Greetings!  I told you I had been busy working on our Valentine’s Day mantel.  I’m sharing it with you today.

This Valentine’s Day will be extra magical as we will be at Disney Land! {watch out Insta friends, my Instagram feed will be overflowing}  We realized our youngest, who is almost 11, was only 2 and a half years old the last time we went to Disney World.  She was telling me she doesn’t remember much of that trip and it made me sad.  She is pretty much already a tween but young enough to still love everything Disney.  Kids grow up so fast!  The kids have a long weekend off from school and we are taking advantage of it.  I hear it’s supposed to be a good time to visit the park…not too busy.  We sure will enjoy the little reprieve of snowy, cold weather we’ve been having here.  I checked the weather and it’s supposed to be a high of 81 and low of 50.  Ahhhhh…that sounds nice.  None of us have ever been to Disney Land, so we decided to check it out instead of Disney World this time.  Anyway, so I have sort of a Disney theme going on this year for the mantel.

The board I bought at Hobby Lobby and painted it with chalkboard paint.  I’ve used this board many times on my mantel.  I just erase and write what I want for the occasion.

I made this garland initially with just doilies and kids valentines I bought at the dollar store.  I glued them on and used different ribbon to tie them together.  Well, the doilies are a little fragile.  I hung it up and it ripped and tore.  I thought if I reinforced it with some washi tape where the ribbon was it would work.  No such luck, they still broke apart.  I hate when a project goes wrong.  I guess the weight of the valentines was just too much for the doilies.  I ended up adding reinforcement by cutting hearts out of card stock and gluing it to the back of the doilies.  I also punched small holes on both sides of the card stock hearts and tied them together with white twine.  Hooray!  It is not falling apart now!  I love the cute Minnie Mouse valentines.  My daughter made some just like this to hand out to the characters when we meet them for an autograph. (Of course hers are not strung together.)

The yarn tree I made for Christmas one year.  Super easy…wrap the yarn around over and over and pin the end on the top.  The dollar store also had these smaller trees. I decided to make a conversation heart tree.  Again, super easy…all you need is a glue gun.  The other tree is made out of buttons, brads and a few flowers.  I’ve seen similar ones on Pinterest and wanted to make one.  You can’t tell in the photo but, I mod podged music paper onto the back of the trees before adding the buttons and hearts.

Anyone who goes into my house knows I love these little black and white signs.  The quotes on them are worth reading over and over.  Santa even put mini ones (wooden signs like the one above) in each family member’s stocking last Christmas.  I found this one at a local shop in town.  The wooden red heart my daughter made.  I found the vase at a local discount store.  The cute Precious Moments couple was on the top of our wedding cake.  It is special to us.

I was going through my love box (where I keep cards & notes others give me) and noticed a theme in the cards hubby has given me.  He likes to give me the cards with the little kids on them.  Aren’t they adorable?!  Boy that photographer must have offered those kids something pretty awesome to get them to pose like that. lol!  I covered the backs of the window panes with different kinds of scrapbook paper and taped the cards onto the paper with blue painters tape. {I love that tape because it holds well but you can remove it when you want without damaging anything.)

The next few photos are of the music paper pinwheels I made.  Again, I attached them to doilies and added a few embellishments on top with the glue gun.  One of the pinwheels didn’t want to hold it’s embellishments.  They kept coming off so I just left it plain. (The one over the 2)

Here it is again all together…

I shot a couple of pics of the tree I have on my foyer table.

I liked the next shot of our newest piece of art above the tree.  Jesus is LOVE.  I thought it fitting to include HIM.  I was trying a different angle to change things up a bit.

I hope everyone has a lovely Valentine’s Day week.  No need to show your love to someone only on Valentine’s Day…express your love daily.

Love Brings Joy,