Mantel

“Christmas fireplace decor” is one of the top home searches on Pinterest this month, which is a bit unkind to the many of us who live in apartments without one. A fireplace gives a room a focus: somewhere for stockings, garland and a glow. You can build most of that feeling without a real fireplace. Here are the options, from the biggest to the smallest. An electric fireplace with a mantel The full version. An electric fireplace with a mantel surround (on Amazon) is a piece of furniture with a heater and a fake flame in the middle. It plugs into a normal outlet. You get a real mantel to decorate, a flickering glow, and some heat on cold evenings. ...

A Thanksgiving mantel is about plenty rather than sparkle: wheat, pumpkins, dried leaves, candlelight. It’s hard to get wrong. And since Christmas decorating starts more or less the day after Thanksgiving, it’s worth setting the mantel up so it can change over without starting from scratch. Harvest Wheat and pumpkins. Dried wheat (on Amazon) laid along the mantel with small white, orange and green pumpkins (on Amazon) between and three pillar candles at different heights. Dried wheat costs very little and keeps for years. ...

A mantel is at eye level and it’s usually where you look first when you walk into the room, so it’s worth getting right. The most common problem is simple: not enough garland. A strand stretched tight across the top looks thin no matter what you add to it. How much garland Buy about two and a half times the width of the mantel. A 48-inch mantel needs around 10 feet (a 9-foot garland (on Amazon) plus a little extra), a 60-inch one about 12 and a half. The extra length is what lets it drape down the sides and dip between hooks instead of sitting flat like a clothesline. ...