Living Room Mantel Shelf ~ A Canadiana Christmas Stop One

Welcome to stop one of our woodland Canadiana Christmas 2010!

Our suburban small town home in Ontario, Canada, has lots of natural elements all year round and a country rustic style of decorating. This season I am trying to focus on a woodland Canadiana Christmas decorating theme.

I love the vintage wavy glass of these zinc lanterns and keep them on our mantel year round. Pinecones, strands of bead berries, and faux and real pine add some natural elements. I think the red and black buffalo plaid ribbon adds the perfect touch of Canadiana (a la ROOTS) to our Christmas mantel. I would love to find some birch twigs to add to the pinecones.

We are planning to paint our living room a darker colour in the New Year, and I am still considering painting this mantel shelf a distressed black, but all of our trim is white.

Our tree in this room last year was decorated for a Cowboy Christmas. I reused many of the decorations this year, but added more Canadiana elements with animals like bears, loons and moose to remind us of our true Canadian wilderness. The rusty sleigh bells to recall winter sleigh rides with my father-in-law's Percheron team. The buffalo check to symbolize the warmth and coziness that blankets and handknits bring to our long Canadian winters. Little cabins, canoes and fishing creels help us to remember our time spent in the outdoors. The cows and barn stars, for our family's love of farming and barns. The full reveal of this Canadiana inspired tree in the living room is coming soon, but here is a sneak peek collage:

We have been working on our wall trim but might not get our family room fireplace mantel completed before Christmas. In the meantime, we are enjoying our mantel shelf in the living room.

Oh, I'm really loving this ribbon and the little cabinet doors propped on the mantel. I played with Picasa but the doors are an off white and our walls are a very soft buttery yellow, not pink!

I found these new cabinet doors for $1 each at a local recycling place and painted them off white with a glaze and distressing. And a true Canadian decorating or painting project is not complete without a Tim Horton's coffee or hot chocolate ;)