no fireplace, no problem

As the big day quickly approaches, things are abuzz around the Little Papercuts home. The tree is decorated and the presents are wrapped, but every year we struggle to find a place to hang our stockings, since we are without a fireplace. Over the last few years I've been wanting to turn our bookcase into a makeshift fireplace for the kids at Christmas, but I've always run out of time and in the end our television cabinet plays home to our kids' stockings. But since Christmas dinner is at a friend's house this year (they're giving us a break since we have a new baby), and because my niece and nephew will be celebrating their first Christmas with us (yes, Santa will be visiting them here), I figured I'd try to come up with something that resembled a fireplace so we could hang all FIVE stockings from it.























So I used some poster board, some scrap booking paper, a glue gun, some tape, ribbon, a hole punch and my trusty scissors and...voila, a cute little fireplace, complete with a roaring fire. It was very easy to make and relatively quick to assemble. While ours is pretty simple, you could definitely be more elaborate and make the fire 3-dimensional by using tissue paper for the flames and paper towel rolls for the logs in the fire. But since we have 3 kids under the age of 1 year, it didn't seem practical to have something they could potentially rip apart and eat:) This can easily be utilized in any space, and when you're ready to put it away it rolls up to be stored until next year. And the best part about it is that it hides all the toys and books for a few days, and 'warms' up the room for the holidays:)