How to build a mantel

In case you ever buy a house with the ugliest fireplace in the world and you need to camouflage its hideousness:

Step 1: First, you need to start with a blank canvas. If you're lucky like me, you'll have the joy of knocking bricks out of your wall with a hammer and chisel. (I won't bore you with pictures you've already seen.) Then your husband will get to cover the gaping hole with sheetrock and mud and tape forever, trying to make the wall smooth. This isn't easy when you've never done home improvement before. You'll end up with this (which looks very odd with nothing but a row of bricks on top).

Step 2: After a few months, when your friends are convinced that you're never actually going to build the beautiful mantel you've spoken of, get started. You'll need to screw a large board into the bricks, or I should say, have your husband screw the large board into the bricks. You'll be trying to hold this board, which is very heavy, perfectly still, even as it jumps when the screw goes from the wood to the brick. The board will shift because you're too wimpy to be your husband's helper, and it will cause some unkind words to be spoken between the two of you. You'll both be quite frustrated. You'll need 2 smaller pieces of board to wrap around the sides, and you'll need to miter the corners, so your poor husband will get very good at cutting angles on the chop saw.

Step 3: Screw another large board on the top, perpendicular to and resting on the first board. This will be slightly easier and shouldn't prompt any harsh words.

Step 4: Place a large piece of crown molding underneath the top piece of wood. Hammer in with small finishing nails. This will also need to wrap around the sides. Because the crown molding is already angled, the angles you'll need to cut for the sides will be nearly impossible to get right. You'll need a genius for a husband at this point. (This is why I offered to build the mantel myself and then withdrew the offer. We would have spent a fortune on crown molding when I cut the angles wrong over and over.)

This is how the molding will look when it's nailed in:

Step 5: Nail a tiny piece of trim along the very bottom edge of the front board. The angles will be really fun to cut on the wrap-around sides of this stuff. Forget to take a close-up picture of this step.

Step 6: Fill in all of the screw holes, nail holes, and any other gaps with putty and then sand smooth. (You should drag this step out for a few weeks so your husband doesn't expect that you can ever get a job done quickly.) Prime with Kilz (I learned this from my mom) to keep any knots in the wood from bleeding through. Then paint. And ta-da:

I recently discovered that I am scared to death of decorating. I have no idea what to put on my new mantel, and I'm terrified of actually hanging anything on the walls. It seems so permanent, and I don't trust my judgement. Any ideas for something cute to place on the mantel?