Late Christmas additions

Yikes, for those of you that just seen these pics without words...well, I hit a wrong button, it came up with no words, so here I am editing... (blush).

Anyhoo, Yep, these photos are way past Christmas, but since I don't believe in working on a deadline for a "hobby" I hope you will forgive me. I have way to many deadlines at work, and I promised myself that my hobby blog would be stress free (most of the time any way :)

This little snow/angel person, is something I picked up a few weeks ago, the little face just spoke to me of sweetness, it is by the artist Bethany Lowe, she has some really cute items.

I have a collection of Swarovski snowflakes, some my DD has given me, and I bought a few for my self, I am always tempted to leave them out all year, the sparkle is just unreal when the light hits them. The little camera effect I did here is now popularly called bokeh, but it is really just a photo set up utilizing something called "depth of field". I am embarrassed to admit, that I did not use a tripod here, I got a new camera from Santa/aka: Me ( I decided I was a really good girl this year, that's my story and I am sticking to it). Anyway, I wanted to see just how far the camera could go without a tripod, hmmm, still need one LOL.

Cream and Crystal tree.....Finally!

Oh my, I thought I would never get these loaded, it took me hours! The pain of a sporatic internet signal, it has been this way for longer than what I care to admit. But, here they are, hopefully better late than never?


I hope every ones Christmas was wonderful. Mine was great, I was able to share it for a few hours of gift opening and Christmas dinner with my DD and her SO...table setting photos to follow....permitting the pleasure of the internet gods...

The Swarovski crystal snowflake on the right was one of my gifts from my DD and her SO for this Christmas, I have quite a few of the large and smaller ones from her over the years and I treasure them.

I decided to dress up the "lady" this Christmas with pearls and jewels, she looks quite content don't you think?

Here are a few closeups of the tree, there are many Lenox ornaments that I have collected and that my DD has given me as one of my Christmas gifts, it is a tradition that I love between us.

The sphere like ornament in the middle is one of my favorite Lenox ornaments, luckily there is a Lenox outlet near me, so I can get them fairly affordable if I am patient enough to wait to purchase them after the holidays.

All over my tree I have hundreds of glass icicles that I have purchased over the last few years, always at the after Christmas sales. I have quite a few chandelier crystals too, the crystals and icicles add such a nice sparkle to the tree, plus they go with what ever color theme I chose to use for the year.

I also like to use silk flower in my trees, they fill up the spaces quite nicely and add in another element of style to the tree. In this tree I used poinsettias and roses.

I hope you enjoyed my late addition to the holiday, I am already looking forward to next year!

EVERYWHERE...Ornaments!

Pretty much everywhere in my living room and dining room are hundreds of ornaments for my cream, crystal and gold tree for this year. The great thing about all these ornaments pictured is that they can easily mix in with a tree of ANY color theme. This is where there is such a big cost saving for me when I do different color themed trees every other year, I only have to have half as much ornaments for a new look because these cream, gold, and crystal ornis fit in with any color scheme. The glass snowflake balls you see in the front are from the Dollar store. You might also notice the plain and simple gold glass balls in the photo too, they and the simple cream balls go into the inside part of the tree to add sparkle and depth, and most important they are very inexpensive fillers, allowing you to use your fancier ones on the outside tips of your tree where you can see them easily.

I have collected the Lenox over many many years. Alot of them are very dear to me, because as a Christmas tradition I gave my DD one of the two same ornis for her future tree, (keeping one for me) and once she was older as a Christmas Eve gift she would purchase a couple of ornis for me. It is great fun opening our new ornis together and putting then up on the tree Christmas Eve, a very important tradition for me. It has build a tree of alot of memories and love.

I still purchase ornis every year, luckliy not as many as I used to, but if they call to me, they are mine!



Lots of ornies on the side table, just waiting for placement on the tree, or design for a vignette. Hint, if you collect perfume bottles you can use them as decorations on the tree (provided they are empty of course).

More ornis on the rug waiting patiently for me to dig in, and start the long decorating process. You can see a few glimpses of some of my Lenox and other glass ornies.

On the coffee table are tons of crystal Lenox ornies, I purchased all of them on clearance after the holiday, they sparkle so wonderfully on the tree. I also have quite a few crystal swag/garland pieces that I add in the tree and use in vignettes and some of my tablesettings, so versatile!

My favorite items, I have at least 200 of these crystals, they take a long time to put on the tree, but they are the fabulous finishing touch. I had purchased these for a "different" kind of Dollar store, I bought every one I seen. I also have hundreds of glass icicles that I had purchased for only 2 dollars a box for 18, at a Dillards after Christmas sale.

(Below) This is a photo of my very large rubbermaid bin of my ball style ornis. I wrapped each of them all up one-by-one, to keep them safe, what you are looking at is some that I have unwrapped. The bag of roses is another fav of mine, it fills in the empty spaces to the tree adding in a certain kind of elegance I think. Poinsettias and hydrangeas are great for this too.

You will also note a few mirrored ornis, they are wonderful for the sparkle and reflection of light.

Hopefully the finished tree will be in the next post, providing my internet connection is still with me..

Holiday Tablesetting Sneak Peek

I thought I would pop in with a little sneak peek of one of my tablesettings that I will be doing over the holidays. I typically do quite a few tablesettings since I have several sets of Christmas dishes and I also see my DD more during this holiday season for dinner.

This is actually a pretty inexpensive table setting to do, everything you see here is glass, You would be amazed how pretty an all glass table setting can be. Another perk of this style of setting is that you can add in any accent color you may want to use so if someone can't afford a patterned set of Christmas dishes you can still acheive a holiday look effortlessly by the accents you decide to add in.

More Christmas tree tips

I'm sorry these tips are slow coming, my internet connection is giving me alot of grief these days.

Placing balls in the inner part of a tree is something a lot of folks don't do, many people only decorate the outside limbs of the tree. When you only decorate the outside, you loose seeing a depth or 3D-dimension type of look to your tree. You also loose the inner brightness caused from putting in these simple reflective balls.

What I do is put either inexpensive gold or silver balls(depending on my color theme) you can buy in sets most anywhere. The gold or silver balls give the needed light reflection you need in the darkest part of the tree, the christmas lights reflecting off of the balls gives an inner brightness and warmth to a tree. For a "bling" look I would suggest at least 50 to 75 balls placed in the inner part of a 6.5 ft tree (of course you can use less, this is just how I like to decorate mine.) As you can see from the photos above, try to place the balls in those bare areas and the area right next to the trunk of the tree, this also hides the ugly wrapped pole (in this photo there are only a few showing now for ease in showing you hope to place them, but you can be assured I will be adding much more.)

Go back and take look at the pic again, do you see all the tiny bright light specks being reflected in the ball? Just the few balls pictured have already reflected alot of light.