Fall Mantel Fail

A few weeks ago, I pulled out all of my Fall decorations and started to Fall-ify my house.  Here's a picture of my Fall mantel:

Um.  PATHETIC.  I know...

So I set my sights on some new Fall decor and a little crafting to help spruce up this sad mantel.  Here's what it looks like now:

Much better! (even with bad lighting in the photo)

I added:

A new vase to hold leaves (clearance at AC Moore $5 and spray painted brown) and 2 fake pumpkins ($3 and $5 from Target) on my re-positioned basket.

A wicker light-up pumpkin ($15 from Target)

3 tiered pumpkin topiary ($15 HomeGoods) and some Fall ribbon from my stash to my candles

And I made these super cute Happy Fall blocks!

The blocks look like this:

Wooden rectangle with scrapbook paper ModPodged on, edges painted brown, and a brown wooden letter glued on

Small wooden block attached to the back so they stand up!

I also added these items to my Fall decor:

Candy Corn yarn trees

A pumpkin subway art-ish piece of art (one piece of subway art scrapbook paper glued to a piece of cardboard, cut out a pumpkin and glued that on, put it on a plate rack - voila!)

And I changed out my previously blogged about Fall centerpiece a bit - took off the yellow felt, and traded the taper candles for pumpkin scented votives!