Almost 7 years later and after just publishing a new post on my spring mantel and some thoughts on decorating and I realize that my philosophy has been the same for many years. This post originally published in July 2012 and while reading through it I had to laugh. How I couldn’t stop messing around with everything. How I like to use plants, always. How I always lean toward the sentimental over the trendy. How it is just so me.

So I thought I would give this old reminder of that time we lived on our first Caribbean island a refresh and share it with you again. It’s a good reminder to just be you. You do you. Use decorating as an opportunity to make yourself smile. And for goodness sake, decorate a shelf in your kitchen if you just want to pretend you have a mantel for a minute.

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I don’t know about you, but I think one of the worst feelings in the entire world is to feel left out. Whether it’s intentional, accidental, preventable, whatever. It always just sucks to not be included and know about it. No?

And you know what one thing I have felt completely left out of since joining blogland?

Mantels.

Some people have some seriously beautiful mantels out there. And bloggers host mantel parties and update their mantels for each season.

And I, I have a driftwood shelf in my kitchen that I am going to pretend is a mantel, somewhat fantel-esque.

I did not make my summer mantel entirely out of paper, but I did try my hand at a couple of paper mantel accessories. Like a book page bowl and a paper mache letter B. And I decided to go with a summer theme, cause, well, it’s summer. 🙂  And I’ll apologize now that all of the pics are relatively dark. This was a late afternoon project in an east facing kitchen. 🙁

And then once I had my fantel all decorated for summer … I fiddled with it. Would it work better without the paper bowl that didn’t really turn out how I had hoped?

Does that make it too off-balance and should I take out the book page framed word art I made my dear husband for our 13 year anniversary of living together? See the 13 there on the frame? 🙂

The grey lettering says “you’re pretty much my favorite of all time in the history of ever”. True statement.

And does the sprig of flower in the corally thing I found at a beach hide my little ‘hope’ sign made on driftwood with a little shell?

That sign is the pair to the other driftwood, shell and sea glass sign that says ‘joy’.

And, would I like the look better without the little pop of hot pink flower?

And, what if I added these other pretty white flowers I found instead of that little shell?

Oh, or, what if I put those flowers in a little blue mason jar and took away the tall blue bottle we found, along with the other bottles, while scouring for driftwood one day?

Ohhhh, I could put the little blue mason jar with the pretty white flowers on the end where the paper bowl was, then I could put the word art I made Joel back on the other side and all would be right with the world.

I didn’t actually realize how much I missed fiddling with decor like that until I lost a couple hours minutes doing just that. The reality is, I can’t keep it like that, because our glass containers filled with food stuffs need a home and storage space doesn’t seem to just be appearing at random in this little breadbox of a house. But, it sure was fun to be back in the game, even just for a hour minute.

You can find the tutorials for these projects in our archives:

• pallet word art
• pallet welcome trough
• how to make book page covered frames