Christmas decorating and an awesome giveaway

Slowly but surely I'm getting around to decorating our home for Christmas. Now that the boys are no longer here to help out, I tend to do things in stages over the course of a few days. Our tree is not up yet and won't be until later next week but I have found some favourites to come out of their year long storage boxes.

 This collection of snowmen sits on one end of my mantel in our rec room. Two  of the three were gifts from a friend.

I found this primitive angel several years ago. I can't remember where I found her but she has been a favourite ever since. 

This festively adorned couple are new additions this year. They are gracing the other end of our mantel. I originally picked up just the one bear on the left. Then I spotted its mate and she just looked so lonesome sitting by herself and I couldn't leave without the two of them. I know my granddaughters will adore them!

I'm changing things up this year with a lot of our decor. Much of it has been around since the kids were young and is getting a little outdated. I'm giving a lot of it to my sons now especially to Jeff since he doesn't have a lot of decorations for the girls. The picture below was taken on my visit to their place last weekend.

 Here is the birthday girl showing off her Christmas tree. All of the ornaments on that tree have been around since their father was a baby. I bought them for our first tree after I was married. Jeff was thrilled when I offered them to him and the girls are now picking out their favourites. The girls decorated the tree themselves which is obvious if you had seen the whole thing. Most of the ornaments are located on the bottom third of the tree!

I tried to get some decent pictures but it was one of those times when the girls were being silly and just not cooperating. I only managed to get a couple of halfway decent shots. Here's one of Oceanne. I just can't believe how much taller she seems to have got since the summer! She seems to be all legs.

You can see the results of their silliness in the next photo. They like to dress up as princesses but thought that it would be fun to dress up Dad this time. Jeff's friend Pasquale seems to get a kick out of his new look!

I'm frantically trying to get those ornaments done for the girls. All of the stitching is now complete and I'm at the beading stage. I hope to get started on that this evening. Christmas concerts have kept my DH and me rather busy so there hasn't been a heck of a lot of stitching time. Plus I seem to have a lingering headache ever since my dental work on Wednesday. They were drilling into my jaw for the implant and the freezing didn't take 100% which has result in this persistent headache. It's slowly receding and I hope to be back to my old self by weekend's end.

I spent all day today completing my Christmas wrapping. I prefer to get it all done in one day otherwise there is wrapping paper lying all over the place. That leaves my Christmas cards and baking remaining. Oh yeah and the tree. That should be up by week's end as we then celebrate my middle son's birthday as well as my hubby's. Bob's is on Monday and Dan's is on Thursday so we usually have a joint celebration involving chocolate cake of some sort. The two of them are chocoholics!

Now I'm off to try and get in a few stitches. Before I go, I wanted to let you know about the awesome giveaway that Nancy is having over at The Victorian Motto Sampler Shoppe.  She's having a fabulous giveaway of her own hand dyed floss. Definitely worth your while. I promise some stitchy pics next week