Alternately titled

“398 Ways to Get Your Husband to Agree to You Painting Some of his Precious Antlers White”

I confess myself, a while back, surprised, when I started to see people using antlers in their home design.  Home design that I liked, that is.  I thought that the only way to use antlers in your home was like this.

Which is fine.  Just not really my style.  My husband and I already had an agreement that all of his antlers remain where they belonged- in the garage.

Then I started to see images like this.

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And this.

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And this.

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And this.

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And most especially this.

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Once I finished drooling over said images, I had to eat some of my previous words and concede that, yes, antlers were beautiful, and yes, I wanted, nay, needed some in the house.

I realize that using antlers for decorating is probably going to become something akin to using heavily flowered swags to match your heavily flowered bedspread circa 1989… but we do live in the woods.  And my husband is a hunter.  And our house is a totally rustic lodge style bungalow.

I think, for us, this trend is here to stay.

So, using some of the antlers we had available to us, we made this one.

Now don’t get me wrong, I loved it, but right away I knew, just knew, that I wanted to paint the antlers and maybe the barnboard behind them.  The antlers white and the board the colour of the wall.  I wanted it to look like the antlers were just floating there.

The problem was, we used real antlers, not resin copies.  This means our wreath is heavy.  Very heavy.  And while having a nice mantel is important to me, I don’t want anyone impaled by a falling antler wreath.  Those sorts of things can really ruin a family dinner.

Plus, my husband was not a fan of painting the antlers.  At all.

So I began my subtle, yet relentless, pursuit of getting my own way.  Basically I asked about 398 times if we could pleaaaase paint the antlers.  And if he could pleaaaase find a way to make them hang without the boards (I did paint them and it still didn’t look right to me).

So my long-suffering and patient husband took out his drill and drilled holes in the antlers in order to screw them all together from behind (previously they were just hot glued) so it would hang by itself and stay together supporting its own weight.  Then I painted (yay!) with ASCP, which will, apparently, cover anything.  Then he found a 100 pound picture hanger and put the thing up.  It took most of one of his rare days off as he had problems finding a stud and then there was a small incident with a falling rusty star and something about the wall being scraped up and needing repainting….

But it looks beautiful.

And he likes it too.  Probably he mostly likes that I’ve stopped talking about it…he’s a very, very good guy.

My white antler Christmas dreams have come true!

Here’s to hoping that all of your crazy, crafty Christmasy dreams come true as well!

I’m sharing with Kate for her Holiday Crafts party, and you can see more pictures of the antler wreath when I share with Rhoda’s Merry Mantelsparty.