Mirror to Chalkboard

One of the important parts of this year's Christmas mantle, is the chalkboard with a wreath hanging in front of it. I love that I can change the word each week, write a Christmas lyric, or write a favourite Christmas poem.

This chalkboard was an easy DIY project that I did one afternoon. When we renovated our bathroom, we took down the generic mirror and in it's place went an oval mirror that I found at Winners. 

That left a plain mirror leaning on one of the walls in the hallway. It never found it's way downstairs to the basement (funny how that happens), so I decided to give it a coat of chalkboard paint and turn it into something useful!

I knew I wanted the edges of the mirror to still be seen, so after taping off the edges with a good quality painter's tape, I gave the mirror a first coat of chalkboard paint with a foam roller. 

There are no pictures of me rolling chalkboard paint, but if you have ever painted, you know what it looks like. Nothing too special. 

The paint went on pretty thick, but I still gave it one more coat for good measure. 

After letting it dry in a closed room for three days, it was ready to be 'conditioned'; i.e. rub chalk all over it and then cleaned off. 

Then came the fun part of writing on it! I wrote one of my favourite lines from a Christmas album that I am loving right now.

 

I love that the edges of the mirror still can be seen. It adds a little sparkle to the large black rectangle on the wall. 

Besides the chalkboard paint, which I found was the cheapest at Canadian Tire, this project was free. My kind of project. 

Have you jumped on the chalkboard train?

Christmas Mantle

This year my Christmas decorating style is 'keep all the breakable stuff on the very top shelf so Gavin doesn't break it'. So far so good. 

A poinsettia here and there, pinecones with lights shining through, fake mini trees and splashes of red is the way I am going in my Christmas decorating.

Usually I set out our little village of Christmas houses and shops that Jesse and I have bought and painted over the years, but the only place to put them is at the perfect height for a certain little gentleman to grab and pull the ground. And that is why one of them ended up in the apothecary jar and the rest of them are stored away for another year. 

I found mini poinsettia plants at Home Depot for a really good price, so I picked up a couple and one found it's way into one of my favourite thrift store finds. 

I hung a wreath over a chalkboard and wrote the word: Hope, which is one of the words from the four weeks of advent. We have hope because of Jesus.

I find that you don't need a lot to decorate for Christmas. It's sometimes better when it doesn't overwhelm the space. Touches of coziness here and there, just enough to say "Christmas is here". 

(You can see how I decorated the mantle last year for Christmas here.)

Linking up with: 

Christmas Crafts and Relaxing

We had a wonderfully busy weekend. We had a party to go to and got to see some friends we haven't seen in a very long time. We also went Christmas shopping and did some decorating around the house. And now that Monday is here, I'm pooped!

So with that being said, I'm taking it easy today. Hopefully catching up on a few chores around the house, like my massive amount of dishes.

The one thing I'm planning to do with my daughter is make paper snowflakes. I loved doing that with my family when we were growing up. There's so many cool designs that you can make. One tip that I found on Pinterest was to make them out of coffee filters. I thought that was great since I have  a pile of coffee filters for crafts and they are perfect circles already!

(Remember to pin from the original source!)

                                                                       Source: heartofwisdom.com via Melody on Pinterest

So have a wonderful Monday! Hopefully I'll have my house ready for a "Christmas tour" by next week. In the meantime, I will try to stop my daughters from breaking all the decorations. Good luck to me, right??