Modern Rustic Thanksgiving Mantel

Thanksgiving is a few weeks away and I’m getting a late start on decorating.

I haven’t even brought the official Thanksgiving/Fall decor bins up from our storage room in the basement.

Yesterday, I took down this Halloween Spider-Themed mantel decor and was looking at our blank mantelpiece wondering how I should decorate it this year.

I realized I had quite a bit of fall food around. I had pumpkins on our front porch from this Halloween Front Door decor. I had a bunch of mini pumpkins and apples from my husband’s friends families garden. and I also had some squash and, zucchini, and pie pumpkins I haven’t made use of yet.

I thought it would be fun to see how placing them all on my mantel would look and it turned out pretty!

I really love the color of the fall food and the different sizes and shapes they are.

However, I felt the mantel lacked height and texture by just using food.

So, I added some mini taper candles I had in my office and a few billy buttons and dried floral stems I had as well.

It came together in about 10 minutes and didn’t cost me anything (as I had everything just around the house).

Supply List for this Modern Rustic Thanksgiving Mantel

pumpkin

gourds

squash butternut

squash acorn

zucchini

apples

mini gourds

mini taper candles (were bought on clearance last year from Williams Sonoma for about $3.00 a pack of 8)

mini glass bottles filled with pepper and other spices to weigh them down. I just used the vials from this Halloween mantel.

Dried floral cream colored. This floral was free, I got it from my yard for these floral arrangements.

billy buttons off Amazon

How to put together this Modern Rustic Thanksgiving Mantel…

1- Place a large pumpkin on both sides of the mantel for visual balance.

2- Create a focal point in the middle of the mantel with items that you have only one of. For example, I only had one butternut squash and one acorn squash on hand so I made that the focal point.

3- Fill in the rest of the mantel with small gourds, apples, mini pumpkins, pie pumpkins, and zucchini (placed in the back to add a little green).

4- Place an odd number of taper candles in candle holders and spread them about the mantel. I don’t have mini taper candle holders, so what I did was use little vials filled with spices to weigh them down.

5- Place dried floral and billy buttons in little vials filled with spices to weigh them down and place them sporadically around on the mantel as well.

That’s it!

It’s so easy to create a mantel like this.

If you use produce you have, leftover pumpkins and gourds from Halloween, and apples from an apple tree, it can be free to do as well!

Plus, it only takes a few minutes to arrange.

I was excited to find that I could create this without using any of the fall decorations that I have used to decorate Thanksgiving mantels in the past.

I find it fun to create new looks and try new things when decorating.

It’s fun for me to switch up holiday decor and even more gratifying when I don’t have to spend much money to do it.

I feel like Thanksgiving kind of gets missed with Halloween ending on the 31st and Christmas already starting in stores, broadcast via emails, online, etc.

However, I do like to remember Thanksgiving and celebrate it as I have so much to be thankful for!

I’m thankful for my husband and children, my friends and family, our health, and our faith.

I’m Thankful for our freedoms, for the conveniences of modern living, and for how accessible necessities like water and heat are—especially thinking of refugees and others suffering around the world who do not have access to these things.

We truly are “rich with blessings” over here at our house and I like to make a point of being grateful for them this season.