My Thanksgiving Mantel

It's my very first ever Thanksgiving mantel!  Pretty exciting.  As with pretty much every holiday until this point, I just threw up a wreath or two (not "threw up" in a disgusting way... that was weird wording) and stuck a few decorations around.

Now that our furniture is rearranged, and the piano is front and center, I've got a "mantel"!  

I used almost all things I had on hand.  
I made the book page leaf garland two years ago for Thanksgiving.  
The turquoise candlesticks are from ikea, we've had them forever, but they used to be silver.  Yea spray paint!  
The white stand I made about three years ago - it's a wooden plate that I glued to a wooden pillar candle holder.  It used to be gray and I sprayed it for Halloween.  White seemed an appropriate color for almost every holiday so that's what I went with.  
I reused the wooden green apples again.  I got them at a thrift store for 50 cents years ago and I don't know why I like them so much, but I do.  
The gold plate stand is one I got at a garage sale last year.  It was missing plates, so I bought some china at the thrift store for 50 cents each - they're white with gold along the edge.  I put some mini pumpkins and pinecones on top and multicolored corn on bottom.  Those were all on hand, so didn't cost me a dime.  Yea!  
You can see I also reused the green scrollwork wooden shelf from Hobby Lobby that used to be black and is now green as well.  Phew, what a run-on sentence... I find that putting it on its side gives me something fun to stack things on to add height.  So I stacked a handmade chalkboard I made - remember this one?  I made a new one in a different frame and added a quote I saw on pinterest that I really like.

 I filled my chevron painted vases with pinecones, mustard and red yarn balls, and fall colored lentils with cranberries.  I stacked them on the orange mini crate (from the Halloween mantel) and stacked that whole thing on top of two wire baskets which I turned upside down.  They were from the dollar section at target last year.

I turned some votive holders upside down for a taller candle holder - it seemed to get drowned out when I used it the intended way.  

I also used my slinky pumpkins.  Easiest craft ever.

See the cute little bird on the candlestick?  I got that at Hobby Lobby (half off) and I love him.  He's made out of book pages! 

I tossed some brown striped fabric up for texture and some books for filler.  Here's a secret.  I only had three books that fit the color scheme - red, orange and brown - so I spray painted one turquoise and one green.  Yep!  I spray painted some thrift store books to get what I needed! 
One the bottom section of the piano, I put three mini baskets I got at Hobby Lobby for half off.  I filled them with some fake fall fruit and leaves and such.

So there you have it!  A Shabby Chic, on-hand, Thanksgiving mantel.  All I bought special for this one was the book page bird for a dollar, the slinky pumpkins at about 3 dollars each, two votive candles and a pillar candle at 1 dollar each and the baskets at 1 dollar each.  That's a whole mantel for  $11!  I like the challenge of using what I have and seeing how I can put the same things together in different ways for different looks. 

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