Trick or Treat Fireplace

Have I ever told you that the space above our fireplace- the focal point of the whole house- was blank for three whole years?  Should we do a painting? Mirror? Clock?  And when we finally did agree on a picture it was a picture of us?  How vain is that, right?  I mean it shows that our family is important.  

Whenever we get new family pictures I order a 20x30 print from Costco (it has to be off a super nice camera to turn out well at that size) for $10.   I had it matted and framed at Hobby Lobby for about $40 which isn't bad for that large and much cheaper than all the paintings we were looking at.  My sister-in-law made us the Whitmer sign for Christmas and even remembered to give me the vinyl names when the twins were born.

Anyway, the real reason I was taking pictures of my fireplace is that I finished the trick or treat banner- even a couple of weeks before Halloween.  Of course I cut out the letters and bought the fabric last year, but oh well.  It's a knock off of Crockery Shed like all my good ideas.  After I cut out the letters I thought I should have done, "spooky" or "boo" or "eek" or even "Halloween" would have been shorter.  I also wish I'd done "or" smaller to fit on one triangle.  I followed the directions for the banner from this link.  I've made one other banner and I have a few others I might make.  They aren't too hard but they do take some time.

I've been wanting the fall leaves garland for a while but could never find them on clearance after fall- so this year I used my 50% off coupon and bought at the beginning of the season.

The candles in the fireplace are a Crockery Shed copy cat as well, I bought mine at Wal-Mart.  Picture me sitting on the floor in the candle aisle for about an hour messing with the design.  I'm a little obsessed- I mean inspired, by Crockery Shed.  I saw a cute link where they filled their fireplace with a ton of different sized pumpkins for fall.  So fun.

Another fun fact- we've never used our fireplace for a fire- not once. Boring huh?  In our defense it is summer about 9 months of the year and we never had it inspected to make sure it's safe to use and there are a lot of "no burn" days because of pollution anyway.  It's basically just a very large decoration- that eliminates any usable corners in our family room- but does provide some extra (albeit hard) seating when needed.  The kids use it as a sort of toy table as well.  Matt wants to tear it out if we ever get around to getting new flooring.  We'll see.