Tips for Decorating Your Fall Mantel Halloween and Thanksgiving are becoming major events for which Americans decorate their homes! So here are some simple and easy decorating ideas that feature your fireplace hearth:
Convert a cluster of small, three to six inch pumpkins into candleholders for your fireplace mantle or hearth. After coring, stick a candle into each pumpkin. Use black and orange candles in your mini-pumpkin candle holders for a Halloween look or candles in yellows, burnt orange and mellow browns for a fall display.
If you are using your fireplace for gas, wood, or gel fires, Halloween appropriate andirons are both fun and functional.
If you are not using your fireplace for fires, it is a great place for a jack-o-lantern. Since your fireplace is designed for fire, it is a super safe place for a jack-o-lantern with one or more candles inside it. Either set the jack-o-lantern on your fireplace grate or on the floor of the fireplace. Your fireplace is the visual focal point of a room, so featuring one or more lit jack-o-lanterns there can be either the total extent of your Halloween decorating or a striking main decoration.
If your fireplace is currently just an empty black hole, a fireplace candelabra can keep it from suffering from the Black Hole Syndrome. For Halloween add orange and black candles, or candles in the shape of little pumpkins or jack-o-lanterns, or even candles shaped like candy corn! After Halloween, just change the candles and get a new look. Whenever you want the welcoming glow of firelight in your hearth without the hassle of logs, just light the candles in your fireplace candelabra. Some fireplace candelabras are designed to hold votive candles or tea lights if you prefer those.
Create a haunted fireplace using spooky-looking branches full of moss with bats hanging from them, black and white portraits, loads of candles, a plastic skeleton head, draped pieces of ripped gauze and a creepy portion of a picket fence.
At Christmas you hang up stockings on your fireplace mantel. Give that tradition a Halloween twist by hanging the kids' Halloween goody bags or plastic jack-o'-lantern buckets from the fireplace mantel. Just remember to move them onto the top of the fireplace mantel before lighting a fire.
Want a really spooky look for your fireplace candelabra for Halloween? Turn down the lights and use glow-in-the-dark candles! That ghostly neon green glow coming from your fireplace is a Halloween Treat!
Buy a dozen or so of the mini pumpkins and line them up across a mantle, evenly spaced, about 8-10" apart. (Protect your wood with circles of foil or plastic.) This is especially good when you have a narrow mantle. You can also use this idea to decorate down the length of a long shelf or table too.
Make or purchase a fall garland of silk or preserved fall leaves and berries. Drape it across your mantle, or attach it under the mantle with tiny nails or hooks. Wind with orange mini lights if desired. (Keep garland well away from fireplace flames.) Decorate with raffia or paper ribbon bows.
Place a large basket next to the hearth and fill with pine cones. Decorate with some fall leaves. Remove the leaves after Thanksgiving and add some pine boughs, red berries, and a bow.
Take down your usual mirror or artwork and hang a large grapevine wreath over the mantle instead. Decorate it with fall leaves and berries, and a bow that goes with your color scheme. Leave the fall wreath up until after Thanksgiving, then replace with a fresh pine wreath.
Arrange three pumpkins of varying sizes in the center of your mantle. Balance it on either side with a grouping of candles and basket of fall leaves or pinecones. You could also place three pumpkins on one end of the mantle and balance it with an arrangement of candles placed at the other end.
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