Fireplace Renovation... Now What?

The hot summer days were spent looking at Thomas destroy the old fireplace, agonize about which scandinavian wood stove would make the cut and then rebuilt the all thing new. We have reached an 'almost finished' state, the kind when you don't stub you toes on sharp or heavy cast-iron objects anymore. The only thing dampening my enthousiasm for the near completion of the work is that now I have to actually find something else to complain about! Just kidding... that's easy.

No, what I intended to write about is the shelves on each side of the stove, as well as the empty space above it. They need filling with stuff and art and I feel completly uninspired. So feel free to share your ideas if you have any ( as if not...), but first here is what it looks like now (Click on the images to enlarge):

and used to look like then:

Can you spot the difference?

post update: To answer some of the comments questions, the problem with the original set-up was the fireplace. It was ugly: Bathroom tiles, fire-retardant paint with a weird texture on the mantel. The worst part was that it actually swallowed heat from the house instead of giving out any, and gave me bad headache even when no fire was going. It's also really important to have a secondary mean of heating here, because we have winter snows that can knock down power for up to a week, a very cold week!