take up the mantel

This is that regular scheduled decorating I was referring to before. We moved into this house in the beginning of October and I was slowly working on decorating, then BAM. Christmas came and everything had to be shuffled and redone for the season. Now that Christmas is officially over at our house, there are decorating issues to get back to. Namely the living room.

This is the old place, the townhouse. I was pretty happy with the living room here. It was summer when this pic was taken so the colours are a bit different from what I am working with now, and the configuration is different. My current living room has a long mantel and bookshelves on either side. It's a lot of space to cover.







Here are some shots of how it looked in November...














Now there are six black framed pictures over the fireplace instead of the empty void.... here are some old close ups....

So the big question is
What should I do now?
Working on it.