Beautiful mantle. I love you.

I can't lie. It's not grouted yet, but I couldn't resist posting pictures. In typical Patrick and Anna style, we built this beautiful mantle weeks ago, and haven't finished.

Isn't she pretty? She'll be a lot happier when those awkward lines are hidden with grout. I was thinking about painting the inside brick a gray color, but I'm happy with the old red brick. Something about new and old gets me giddy.

I LOVE my mantle. This mantle from Centsational Girl is what did it for us. That girl knows how to make a mantel pretty. And take pictures. The actual title underneath my pin on Pinterest is "i think i might have just repinned my mantel design." And yes, this is what we went for, for the most part.

Ours has a TV on top instead of a super adorable mirror, and we used travertine stone tiles as the face of the design. I may not take pictures as well, but it's so perfect in person. I'm kind of in love. With wood and stone. Hmm. These cute little high-five bookends I got from Joss & Main. For some reason, I absolutely had to have them. They'll be making another debut at my little sister's house when I move in there next weekend. 

Oh and as flash back to back in the day before we moved in and how awful this place looked (in our walkthrough of the house before the old tenants moved out completely):

Yuck. Check out that stupid wall. Loving life in the Bordner home now that the wall is gone. Too bad I'm leaving in a week. How can I be so excited and so sad at the same time? Crazy.