hello, saturday

When you start planning a move from Texas to Colorado, it won't take long for you to dream up a huge, beautiful, river rock fireplace with a gorgeous mantle.  And it's not a big leap to see, in your dream, full green garlands lit up with twinkle lights and festive stockings hanging from the gorgeous mantle for Christmas.

But then you move to Colorado and you realize that it's much colder here than in Texas.  And central heat isn't as practical in Colorado as it is in Texas.  And while fireplaces are beautiful, they aren't the best way to make houses warm.

We heat our home with a wood stove.  It's not a beautiful fireplace.  It is a practical wood stove.

It heats our entire house.  As wood stoves go, it's the cutest one I've seen.  And it's totally fun to have a fire every night for 7-ish months of the year.

Unfortunately, it's not the best idea to put a mantle near a wood stove.  I saw one once in a Hallmark movie, but Honey says that Hallmark movies aren't always real.

Sigh.  Oh well.  Love the house you're with, right?

When I was unpacking I realized that the mantle had always been a pretty big focal point in our past living rooms.  I had a hard time finding places for my favorite things that used to sit on the mantle.  And don't even get me started on Christmas decorations.

So I started dreaming up a way to solve the no mantle problem.

I started by printing off Shanty2Chic's free plans for a floating shelf.  I broke the news to Honey that I had a Joanna Gaines style vision of a floating shelf on the huge blank wall above our TV.

So we took the pick up to Home Depot to buy some 2x4s and some cedar because that's what Joanna always uses.

We knew we wanted our shelf to be longer than our TV cabinet and the wall was barren enough to handle it, so we planned to make our shelf 8 ft long.  At the 11th hour, I took a chance and asked Honey if we had enough barn wood left from our loft project.  And we did!  We were able to piece some of it together and use it instead of the cedar.  Sorry Joanna.

Because we did that, our shelf ended up being 8 inches deep instead of 6.

I'm so glad though.  I think 6 inches would have been too small for the space.  A wannabe, but not quite.

I'm also really glad we used the barn wood.  I love having a bit of the loft wood wall in the living room.

Now the arranging and rearranging can begin.  And maybe I'll wait til after Halloween to hang the garland and stockings.

Before:

Today (because we all know it changes pretty often):