Your fireplace, as the central focal point in its
room, is a great place to decorate when welcoming in the New Year. Here are three ideas for decorating your fireplace mantel and your fireplace for New Year's Eve or New Year's Day.
Decorate Your Fireplace Mantel for New Year's When you take down the Christmas decorations from your mantel, immediately replace them with
New Year's decorations. A mantel clock or other large clock, perhaps with the time set for almost midnight, can be the mantel decorating centerpiece. Distribute New Year's party
favors such as hats, balloons, and noisemakers across the fireplace mantel. Cluster the silver candles in sparkling glass or silver candlesticks and on one or both ends of the
fireplace mantle. Finally, unroll streamers in silver and in whatever is the main color in your party favors. Generously drape those unfurled streamers around and among the
clock, candles, and party favors.
Decorate Your Firebox for New Year's If you don't have gas or real logs in your firebox, you can create a dramatic
and festive New Year's Eve still-life in the firebox. (The firebox is the area inside your fireplace where a fire would be placed.)
Collect items that make you think of
New Year's celebrations: Champagne bottles, an ice bucket, champagne glasses, New Year's party favors, candles inside hurricane globes, glass balls, balloons, a clock
set almost at midnight. On your computer, using card stock, print large, individual numbers for the New Year. Cut out the numbers and attach the bottom of the back of
each one to a small box so each number will stand up. Arrange these items in a pleasing array on the floor of the fireplace firebox. Make the arrangement
visually appealing by elevating some of the objects using inverted glass bowls, glasses, or candlesticks.
Inside the firebox, just above the area that is normally in sight, tape a string from the front left corner to the back right corner. Tape another string from
the front right corner to the back left corner.
Unfurl silver and black streamers and generously and informally scatter them
on and around the objects you have arranged in your firebox. (Use them to hide the glass bowls or glasses you have used to elevate some of the objects.)
For the final pizzaz, unfurl more streamers and hang them from the strings you placed in the firebox. Keep some of these streamers too short to touch the
objects in the firebox, others just long enough to drape over some of the objects, and still others long enough to puddles on the firebox floor.
New Year's Fireplace Candelabra If you use a fireplace candelabra instead of a burning fire in your fireplace, you can create a striking display for the New Year using numerical candles and your fireplace candelabra.
In the cake decorating section of your favorite store, usually in the display with traditional birthday candles, you will find candles in the shape of numbers. Gather the
numbers you need to create the New Year's number.
Place the number candles, creating the New Year's number, in your fireplace candelabra. If the fireplace candelabra has spaces for more than four candles,
add ones in colors that coordinate with the colors of your number candles.
ou can create a dramatic
and festive New Year's Eve still-life in the firebox. (The firebox is the area inside your fireplace where a fire would be placed.)
