Christmas Time Mantel

Probably like the rest of you, I have been busy decorating the house for the season! I can remember in years gone by this time before Christmas just dragging by...s.l.o.w.l.y....!   Where did those days go?  Now days, time seems to fly right out the window.  I do tend to dawdle more now than I did when I was younger and perhaps that's it.  I really have slowed down and just seem to take so much more in.  In any case, I thought I would share some images of our Mantel this Christmas. Every year I do it up differently and this year is no exception. All of the photo's below will enlarge when clicked on.  I really had to resist posting them all BIG!

This guy has been in our family for years on end....I love him!
He plays soft Christmas tunes and his world globe spins slowly...

Jack has laid claim on all 5 of the stockings this year!

A hand painted gift from my son and his wife. This ornament was painted from the inside! Just stunning...

I love Christmas time and all the shiny things to go along with the love you can feel in the air!  I also really enjoy sharing with you my little place in the world, and how it looks and changes with each season.  Now all I need is some snow!  Can you hear my Santa?

Jack through the years...and getting a jump start on Christmas!

For the past year, every time I open my Picasso program to do something with photos I'm greeted with rows and rows of just little face sized images of Jack from over the years. Somewhere along the line, Picasso started with some sort of face recognition program in this software. At some point, it asked me to identify these faces, so over time I did this and now just have all these "Jack" images. It hit me one day recently just how much his little face has changed over the years, even more so in the past year.  He's lost his baby face and it's been replaced with that of a boy!



I'm pretty busy these last few weeks before school starts, but I'm setting some big plans in place come the end of August.  I've decided this is the year that I am going to implement Organized Home's (Cynthia Ewer's website) Holiday Grand Plan. With this plan you start getting your home ready for the holidays and all that comes with that at the end of August.

I've decided I'm going to work through the plan this year and blog the adventure.  Anyone that is interested will be welcome to join in with me here (or over at Organized Christmas)! And if the Holiday Grand Plan is a bit over the top for you, there is more of a crash course plan that you don't need to start until the end of October called the Christmas Countdown.

I'll leave you with a few links to the Holiday Grand Plan printouts so if interested you can get a feel for what this all entails!

Holiday Grand Plan ; They haven't updated this to 2010 yet, but they have informed us that they are in the process of doing that!

Holiday Grand Plan 2010  Calendar

Christmas Countdown Planner printouts : This includes baking planner, gift list, chores and Christmas card list.

I'm looking forward to reclaiming my house, but mostly my storage spaces which in time, I tend to just shove full of stuff.

Hope everyone is finding a way to stay cool.  We have a very hot week here in the midwest and I'm ready for autumn to come!