EEK projects!

Ok...the short and skinny....our house is OFF the market. While we would love a piece of property with more room to grow into, it appears it isn't in the cards right now. :) The biggest reason why is that the interest rate when up on us and the rate being so low is a prime reason why we would have been able to move up in house at this time. With the change in interest rate and the potential hit we would take in our equity to get out of the home, it did not make financial sense to sell at this time. So....we will better spend our time and money fixing up our current home to be a home we are very happy with.We have TONS of projects we "want" to do but they will be a major work in progress and I'm going to guess it could take a good year to get them all done. We'll see how it goes. I won't bore you all with the details of what we want to do unless you are curious... But one thing we MISS in this house is a fire place. We would LOVE a fireplace. I miss the mantle of a fireplace. Our current house really lacks places where I can decorate and make it feel "homey." Shannon is always doing such cute cute decorations on her mantle and I so wish I could do things like that. Well....today I saw a tutorial for a fake mantle...EEK I'm giddy. It's a take off of the Pottery Barn mantle shown here: I was browsing through some craft blogs a few moments ago and like answer to my decorative desires... I found TWO blogs that have made their own versions of this ledge at a MUCH cheaper cost than pottery barn's $400 price tag!! EEK Looks like I'm adding one more project to our to do list!