Silver Mantle

After uploading all the photos I'm realizing this post is going to look a little bit "shrine-y". My apologies, you can stop reading now. :) I just wanted to capture our updated mantle from every angle. I've been going through this "use it or lose it" cleaning spree in the basement for about a month now. It started during Easter as part of purging and now it just feels amazing to be rid of stuff or put it in it's rightful spot. I had this stack of frames sitting there in boxes from our wedding (from Bed, Bath and Beyond) but hadn't been sure of where to put them.... until I had the brainstorm to bring a touch of glam into the master bedroom.

I took this angle so you could see where everything is in relation to the pink photos I hung last week.

I took this photo, even though it looks nearly identical to photo #1, because I pulled up the rug. I wanted to give you a feel for what the space will look like when it's just hardwood there... even though the hardwood will be dark walnut, the same color as our kitchen and living room.

I picked these lilacs from a lilac bush that has more turned into a super sized lilac tree in our yard. The urn was a 50 cent yard sale find and I just love the uneven-ness of flowers in urns... a casual elegance, don't you think? The photo you see next to it is one of my favorite wedding photos taken by our talented photographer Dan Nystedt, also a Gordon College alum.

The next photo of Drew with the hose was from this past month and makes me smile every time I see it. I enlarged that one to a 5x7 and kept a smaller one of the two of us in 4x6 (sorry for the glare on that!). My friend, and uber talented photographer, Morgan Roy, took it this past October for our Christmas cards.

The two photos on the left were also taken by Morgan, the photo of Drew with the frog hat was taken six days after he was born. My friend Davia made him that adorable hat, she should go into business knitting cute animal hats. This was such a quintessential Drew pose, he always slept with his little hands tucked up next to his face.

The next photo is of my main man with Drew taken at that same October photography session with Morgan. This is maybe my all time fave photo of them together... unless you count the photo of them when Drew is dressed up as a puppy for Halloween, that makes me melt too.

I wanted to show you a close up of the frame and of the most adorable little guy. I put a little tiny creamer filled with a pink rose and lilacs right next to him.

There we go... some of my favorite photos from our family's life! I love how it brings so much warmth to have family photos onto the mantle but I also love how it looks sort of glam in the silver frames with an elegant white urn. I bet AJ never pictured his bedroom looking like this... :)