Gearing Up For High Gear Holidays Now

It's a busy day today. The Man and The Bug arrive tomorrow and the holidays will suddenly go from very sedate and solitary to very high-gear. I am tidying up the remnants of decorating and the mantle is coming along - you may recognize the lanterns added on the side, ha. Since this photo I've added pine cones to soften things up a bit. I need to tidy up that cord on the right side and get the little table on the left cleaned up and decorated.

Admission required here that the blackboard text is "photoshopped." Why, because gosh darn it, even though I just saw a full box of chalk last week somewhere in this house and I have another box somewhere, of course I can't find either of them this week. Why does this happen?

I stopped and bought a couple of bags of flour today for holiday baking. I am hoping to have gingerbread and sugar cookie dough in the freezer by tonight for baking and decorating in the next few days. Here's what we did last year.

I have some not terribly fun cleaning to do...bathroom is least exciting of that. Blugh. I am also looking for a spot to store a bunch of wicker lanterns from my shopping extravaganza yesterday...this will be a trick. I was able to pack them in five big paper shopping bags, so hopefully they will be out of sight soon.

Today sounds to be exciting, right? I'm laughing. Ah, the magic of the holidays! Hope you are enjoying your holiday days. They go by so fast. Here's a view of the mantle magic at night. It really is so lovely to have some lights twinkling in the house during dark winter nights.

images by kalanicut