Christmas Mantle Bliss

In true crafter fashion, my mantle is not complete. I'm hoping to have it finished before Easter, but we'll see. I had this bright idea to do a lime and red theme, instead of my usual red and white. Cute, huh? Problem? I have tons of red and very little lime green. And Husband just can't justify my reasoning to buy all new decorations just because I had a wild hair to change it up. He loves me, he just doesn't understand the crafter in me sometimes. Good thing I'm thrifty and a somewhat genius (seriously, I am. Ok...not really). Oh and I have my secret weapon...Hello Dollar Tree.

(To truly enjoy the beauty of this mantle you are going to have to come over and drink hot chocolate by the fire with me, because I took these pictures with my iPhone.) (RIP Trusty point and shoot, we had some good times.)

I am definately loving how it is coming along, and it could very well be complete if I had paid attention in second grade and learned to keep my hands to myself.  But I keep moving, and tweaking, and picking at every. little. thing.
I made a tissue paper tree from Halsey's tutorial over at Spunky Junky, I had high hopes of doing two green ones and two red ones. But I gave up on that after just finishing a red one and half of a green one. Tissue paper and toddlers don't go well together!

(Here's one of the conversations we had while I was making a tree:
T: What's this Mom?
Me: It's tissue paper.
T: Snot....Blow....Fake Sneeze. Look Mom, I blow my nose!)

I made the "Believe" garland by painting my ornaments green and using the eraser end of a pencil for the polka dots.  The letters are just stickers I had on hand. I hung up my twine and just used ornament hooks to hang them up there.

The reindeer ornaments  and snowflakes came from Target. The reindeer were $2 for two, the snowflakes were $1 for four.  I had all the balls on hand, except for the lime green ones, they came in a pack of four at Dollar Tree. Everything else I had on hand.

That's pretty much it... for now....

What do you think?