My Porch Prints: Woodland Christmas Mantel

Lately, I'm obsessed with woodland décor. Maybe it's because we recently moved to a house near a lake. But there's something romantic and cozy about a fireplace, rustic logs, woodland creatures and buffalo check.

I recently painted the mantel above our fireplace. It was a kind of honey-colored wood and didn't really match. I thought a nice clean white would go better with my style. It also helps items to pop.

For my woodland-themed mantel, I used plain wood branches, painted white to give them more of a birch-feel. For the greenery, I cut up an inexpensive wire garland into "pine branches" and lightly spray painted them white for a frosted look.

The knit stockings are from Christmas Central (christmascentral.com) They were really inexpensive (less than $10 each) and are perfect for that "lodge" feeling. I added chalk tags with our names.

Stocking are probably our favorite part of Christmas morning. It's our tradition to let the kids wake up (but not before 6 AM!) and open their stockings first. It keeps them from waking up mom and dad. As they grew older, we added "making coffee" to the stocking tradition. So even if their giggles wake us up, at least there's coffee!

You'll notice a couple of little owls peeking out from the greenery as well as some other little touches like dollar-store snowflakes and a white feather. The glass hurricane jar is from a thrift store. I threw in a little fake snow and added a lantern ornament plus a few bottle brush trees. The red and white scarf is also a thrift store find. And the buffalo check wrapping paper was from the dollar store.