It seems only appropriate that I share with you my little Thanksgiving mantel since I now have Christmas wreaths up on my windows.  Yes, you heard right: Christmas wreaths. 5 of them!  I nearly cleared Lowe’s out of their limited early wreath inventory yesterday and then hung ’em on the windows last night.  I am the girl that decorates for a holiday way too early.  Remember the mums in August? Ok, but this post is not about Christmas at all.  It is actually seasonally timed for Thanksgiving…

Let me start by telling you that next fall I plan on coming up with one comprehensive mantel design that works from Labor Day through Thanksgiving. Ok? Remind me I said that please.

Let’s take a walk down memory lane, shall we?  First it was our September Harvest Mantel.

Then we had my favorite so far, the Spooky Halloween Mantel.

And because I was over the spook factor in November, we have our final fall mantel.  Allow me to introduce the Abundant Thanksgiving mantel…

Honestly nothing fancy shmanc here folks. I basically took the remnants of the harvest mantel and the Halloween mantel (aka the things that didn’t rot yet) and haphazardly dumped them to reflect the abundance of Thanksgiving. I had the cornucopia in my stash already.

And yes, I left up the feather wreath although I feel strongly that a burlap would be more suitable. The truth is, this little transition mantel display will be short-lived.  It is a layover between the spooky mantel and Christmas extravaganza that is coming!

Oh!  I was happy to put my new cute little vintage alphabet blocks to work for the first time (that’s a lot of adjectives).  

The elephant in the room (or the neon orange looking sign) was a little trial project. I swear it is not that orange in real life. I would call it pumpkin.

Remember our door turned headboard?

Yeah? Well, we got another door destined for the dump from the same friend. This one was an old 5 panel door.  Thanks Buzzy!

My bf/handyman hacked it into 5 pieces for me. I took one of those and lightly sanded removing the flaking paint but keeping most of the original brown paint.

I then tried a technique that I am calling “reverse stenciling”.  I used mailbox stickers from the hardware store and laid them out on the surface. I also taped off a frame on the panel. Then I painted the rest of the door/panel/sign.  What are we calling it now?  After it dried, I carefully pulled the letters off to show the chippy brown original paint underneath.

I decided to do a little swirly embellishment which is part stencil, part free hand and part rubber stamp (the leaves). I sealed it all up with a semi-gloss poly. I’m thinking I could do without the shine though when I look at these pics. A satin would have sufficed. Oh well. This display is short-lived anyway!  The countdown to the Christmas mantel is on!

Saving one old door at a time…

And for the reminders (I’m like a naggy mother)…

• Catch my friends’ episode of Kitchen Impossible today at 5 pm EST on DIY Network.
• Last chance to enter the Poppies and Petals giveaway is today at 10 pm EST.
• Button your coat!  It is cold outside.