Nutcracker Holiday Mantel Decor

Fair warning. Your jaw may drop after viewing my Nutcracker holiday mantel decor. (There also may be a pun or two in this blog post.)

You know I love a theme, so I chose nutcrackers as this year’s holiday decor theme for our dining room fireplace. This theme has been a long time coming, as I have been in possession of my mother’s nutcrackers for years.

Decades, actually, but who’s counting?

I don’t always decorate with the nutcrackers because they don’t match anything that I own. I also can’t seem to get rid of them for sentimental reasons. I’m sure you have your own version of this in your house.

It was a labor of love to return the nutcrackers to their rightful place, front and center, in the holiday decor.

In fact, I had to open up a nutcracker hospital on my kitchen counter to make it happen.

The big nutcrackers had a variety of maladies. Occupational hazard?

The first problem was that I had wrapped them in towels to store them in a bin in the attic. For some unknown reason, the towels adhered to the nutcrackers, leaving fuzzy fibers stuck to the paint.

It looked a bit like the nutcrackers needed a shave, so I gave them one…with sandpaper.

The maladies got worse from there.

Arms were falling off. I glued those back on.

Swords were snapped off. Chopsticks and wood skewers make excellent nutcracker swords.

There was more than one broken or missing nose. I used a paint stir stick to fashion new ones.

One nutcracker was missing a foot. He’s still missing a foot. This nutcracker hospital was not equipped to handle that sort of trauma.

It begs the question. What happens in the attic when I’m not looking?

This feels a little like Toy Story come to life.

Once I got the nutcrackers on the road to recovery, I turned my attention to making a tree collar that looks like a drum.

I have seen these made on the internet, but most people use a bucket to make a drum tree collar.

I didn’t have a bucket I wanted to sacrifice, so I used a 12-inch cardboard tube. It’s actually a concrete form tube that you use to pour concrete footings for a deck or fence posts.

Instead of using paint to make the tube look like a drum, I used fabric and ribbon. I repurposed a high school graduation gown for the fabric portion of this DIY. It was the perfect shade of red, and my daughter wasn’t going to use it again. (I did save her cap and tassel, so no one freak out. This will not be the thing that requires therapy.)

Of course, a nutcracker-themed mantel also needs plenty of nuts, so I made a nut garland using walnuts, almonds, and hazelnuts.

I grew up calling hazelnuts filberts. My mom even worked in a filbert orchard for a while, which isn’t super surprising given that Oregon (my home state) produces 99% of the hazelnut crop in the U.S.

In the 1980s, the Oregon Filbert Commission changed its name to the Oregon Hazelnut Commission to align with the European terminology and to assist them in marketing their crop globally. While Oregon is a large player in domestic hazelnut production, the U.S. is a small player in the global hazelnut market. Turkey produces 70% of the world’s hazelnuts, followed by Italy. (source)

Seems like the global nut market is a tough one to crack for a single U.S. state.

Anyway, even though I had to drill a hole in each of the nuts to make this garland, this wasn’t the nuttiest craft I’ve ever done.

In fact, it was one of my fastest, easiest, and cheapest DIY creations of late. Hmmm. That might say more about the things I’m usually making instead of the nut garland.

It was all worth it because I think my nutcracker holiday mantel decor turned out pretty fun.

Have you ever made a nut garland or opened a nutcracker hospital in your kitchen? Do you enjoy hazelnuts or a hazelnut spread?

Let me know! You can comment on this blog post, email me here, or reach out via direct message on Instagram or Facebook.

Happy Christmas!

If you’d like a drum tree collar, but don’t want to make one, try one of these:

Drum Tree Collar | Home Depot

Drum Stack | Walmart  (Could be converted to a tree collar.)

Drum Tree Collar | Amazon

Thank you for spending part of your day here. If you’d like another blog post to read, try one of these.

Denim Christmas Trees – A Festive Up-cycle Project

DIY Paper Tree Ornaments

Turn Building Blocks Into Christmas Ornaments

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