So, I'll be honest. I was a little sad to take down the decorations over the mantle for Christmas.
They'd been up the entire month of December. And not too far before that, the Halloween decorations had been up over the mantle for the entire month of October.
So, I left bits and pieces of the non-holiday Christmas stuff up, and last weekend I added some things I had around the house for a make-shift Valentine's mantle.
This marks a first - I've always left the decorating to Halloween and Christmas. I've never done anything for Valentines. So although I was able to pull some red into the mantle from things I had around the house, the mantle was noticeably missing a heart. And it was missing until yesterday. I looked at a few different places for a heart to finish things off and discovered that waiting a little more than a week before Valentines to start looking for hearts was going to be a similar experience I had MANY YEARS ago when I decided I needed to find a Tickle Me Elmo for Jack a week before Christmas...
Needless to say, I found one at Michaels that I settled on, 50% off no less!
I picked up the vintage xoxo letters a few years ago when my friend Sande and I ventured up to San Francisco for a weekend of treasure hunting.
The gumball machine is a recent addition, found at a local antique store in December. Wasn't sure what I was going to do with it when I bought it, but that's certainly not a first for me. Just ask Nick.
When I first added the ceramic balls to the inside, I had a bit of a problem. Not enough of them. I picked them up a few years ago at Michaels for $1 each - score! Should have bought more. But back when I bought them, I wasn't sure what I was going to do with them (surprise, surprise), so I figured the 15 or so I bought at the time was plenty.
Yes, plenty to take up space. No, not plenty enough to fill the gumball machine.
So I improvised.
I bought a package of ping pong balls at Target for $4 and strategically placed them towards the back of the gumball machine as fillers before adding the ceramic balls.
They're smaller than the ceramic balls, but because they're placed towards the back, you really don't see them.
And voila! They did their job.
My next project is to tackle the built ins on either side of the fireplace. What I've had up there has been up there too long and is stagnant. Stagnant!
Not sure yet what I'm going to do, but I've been Pinning to my 'Shelves Need Help' board, gathering ideas. Whatever I do, I'm pretty sure the gumball machine will have a home somewhere in there.
