Back to School Mantel

We have an electric fireplace in our living room, and I told Ryan earlier this summer that I wanted to start decorating it seasonally. It's just a fun challenge I wanted to pursue to change up our decorating in the room where we spend most of our time.

After some um...{ahem} time on Pinterest...I came up with mantel #1...the Back to School mantel.

Interesting, since, after all, we have no one in this house attending school.

Praise. The. Lord.

But check out the elements I used and let me know what you think!

First...the big picture:

I love Ryan's big clock above the fireplace - and we just added that shelf in our renovating, so we could always have the candles without using up the mantel real estate. I like that addition more and more every time I look at it!.

I tried to "shop around the house" when I could...and tried to spend minimal money on the rest. I had the easel already, and the notebook paper is actually a white board I found on the dollar shelf at Target. The apple came from Hobby Lobby and may have been the most expensive thing I got for this mantel. {Isn't that just like an apple!! Always so costly.} Bought two packs of pencils for a dollar per pack and put them in Ryan's pencil holder from our office. Dug the frame out of my picture frame stash and printed the pictures on our printer. I did purchase the letters at Hobby Lobby - and decided to leave them plain to keep with the burlap-y theme I have scattered around the house. The bell was Ryan's - and the flowers were a gift from Ryan.

Like I said, no one in this house is in school right now, but I loved this quote I found {on Pinterest} because we do seem to live in a constant state of learning. I love to learn - I just love NOT having a quiz to follow it up!

Seemed appropriate to add the apple. Why is fake fruit so expensive??? I thought about adding chalk or crayons to the mix, but decided to stick with pencils to honor my love of writing. :)

I had to do a throwback to our childhood on here. I had to. Fourth grade for him, fifth grade for me. Do the Shaffers know how to rock 1988 or WHAT?

I intended to make a nice stack of books covered in brown paper...but the letters were so big, they sort of took over. It's okay though...I like the way it turned out.

I collected bells when I was growing up - so it's funny to me that the bell we used is Ryan's. HA! But I love this one and it fits in with the feel of the thing. And to finish the thing off - the flowers are in our high school colors. Good old green and gold!

We like it...our first little mantel in our new living room!