Mantle Decor- Channeling "Out of Africa"

After watching Out of Africa (for about the 12th time) the other day, I got to feeling that it was time for a change in mantle decor. So I took down all the blue glass and sea shells I've had up for the last month or so, and began hunting the house.


I started by polishing up Nana's old silver tea tray (a bit of a chore since the thing is rather pitted!) and scraping the wax off the crystal candle sticks.


(Oh my god, I just noticed there's a hand print way up on the mirror! How it got there I have no idea, that's about 7 feet off the ground!)
Then I pulled out some animal print votive holders a friend gave me for Christmas last year, and a snake print candle I've had kicking around since college! I'm not quite sure how that thing made it through the 5 or 6 moves I've made since then when I'd never used it, but I'm glad now that it did!


I filled in the lower level with some wooden elephants from my collection, and a stamp a friend brought us back from a trip to China:

It's some sort of carved stone, not sure what kind, but light shines through it, which is really pretty. The bottom is carved with the characters that spell our last name, or so I'm told! I think it's a very cool thing, but I need to find someone who can read it to verify that it isn't actually some profanity!

To add a little height to the display I headed out to my field thinking I'd find some seeded out grass and tie a bunch together with a pretty ribbon. Somehow, though, I couldn't find any! I was a little disappointed, but figured since I was out there I may as well go for a walk and see if I could find a substitution. (Ok, so really it was the dog that insisted on the walk!) And look what I found!


The moment I stopped looking for the grass and just started looking at the field, I noticed all this absolutely gorgeous dried Queen Anne's Lace! I love how sculptural it is- it looks almost like an Acacia tree out on the Serengeti!

I love when things just work out like that, don't you?


So there's my Out of Africa inspired mantle! Happily it coincides (and coordinates!) with the beginning of feeling like I need to change things over for fall. I'm trying to resist that feeling since it's going to be a long time before I can pull out the summer things again! I should probably refocus that energy into refinishing the kitchen table, since we're going to be needing it again soon!
I'm linking up to Artie's Vingette Friday over at Color Outside the Lines, so head on over there to see other pretty things people are putting together!