A little over a week ago I went over to our friends Rick and Mary Pat’s ranch. They are the ones who have the not interested in being milked meat goats too. Which was a total distraction from my true purpose in coming.
The real purpose: Succulents. Beautiful glorious succulents. These pictures don’t do justice to how many plants I came home with. The back of my car looked like a nursery.
The beautiful thing about succulents is that they are incredibly easy to take care of, and they will root themselves with no extra additives. All you have to do is pull of the bottom leaves and shove them in the soil. This is lazy gardening at its prime.
Even the leaves just like this will often take root too so I plant those as well:
Several days earlier I had happened to have stumbled into buying 5 of these pretty little things:
I really don’t know how it happened….they were marked down to a buck at walmart and five just magically appeared in my shopping cart.
They are normally $2.50 a pot which is still a pretty good deal, but I had been stalling for a while since I wanted a good number of them. The plan had been to use them for a pretty little herb garden in the kitchen. But when I came home with the trove of plants though they had to go somewhere and I wanted them inside which drastically reduced my number of viable planters.
Four got succulents and the other already had some basil starts in it so I left it be.
Pretty right?
In response to my Facebook plea for succulents that landed me this drove of plants my sweet hubby saw my request and slipped this onto my desk the other day:
He has been showering me with cards and flowers and now little succulents, for the past few months and I am loving it. It had been hiding in the dark recess of our room/office on my desk and it really needed to be out in the light. I never seem to know what to do with plants, they never seem to be put in the right places in our houses so I setout to change that.
I decided the mantle was a good place to start and this was my first idea of get them off the ground and head to bed. The picture is just propped by the way, as I wasn’t quite ready to commit to such a plain setup.
A quick look through on Pinterest turned my favorite two of the day up. This one because of the awesome mishmash of containers and textures in the planters.
And this one because its just amazingly gorgeous in every way. Love the white pots and candlesticks re-purposed and the layering details. I’ve been ogling the chalkboard for ages. Definitely on the to do list as soon as possible. I also really liked the height the greenery brought and how it was symmetrical but had some mix ups too like where the smallest creamer pots sit.
I think the plates on the wall are a bit overkill though and I hate putting holes in the wall so we will leave that one off the list.
This is what I finally settled on:
I really like it. The picture is a black and white Kevin had before we met, he actually bought the print from a gal in his photography class in college. The succulents totally satisfy my white ceramic need and the splash of green and texture is great.
Stacks of books, spine out give that great old texture without showing the mismatched and strange book titles (healing and deliverance next to french cooking anyone?) Maybe that does actually make sense though haha.
My sweet baby gift succulent adds just the right color lift it all needed.
The mantle needed just a little more punch though and I really wanted a little animal figure of sorts. Then a package arrived in the mail from Kevin’s parents and lo and behold out came a little hippo figurine and a club from Tanzania! Tom (Kevin’s dad) just got back from some relief work over there and had gotten us these beautiful ebony wood pieces. They are perfect!
The bottles are cream soda bottles we get from the mini store next door to our house that have great old fashioned lettering on them.
I am changing up my old baby bassinet for a DIY in Noah’s room and had to remove a section of the wicker from it. So I snatched some of the leftover pieces and mixed up some of the colored ones into the glasses to get a little height going.
All in all I’m totally in I love it. I’m sure it will get swapped out someday but for my first true mantle experience I am quite pleased with it!
What do you like to use on your mantle? Do you change it out every season or leave it for years?
The Mantle arrangement looks great ! Yes the little animal pieces and wicker strands finished it off nicely 😉 Great job !