The decorating begins!

The walls are painted!  A few pictures are back on the walls and the rest are in boxes until after Christmas! I needed to get some decorating done!   

So we have a tree after a small crisis when our old, hand me down tree partly died.  The lights went out on the whole bottom half.  Now when I saw hand me down......this was our second hand me down tree and I demanded sweetly ask my husband if it wasn't time for a brand new tree.  After an hour of trying to get the lights to work, an hour on the computer reading everything he could find about getting the lights to work and nothing working, he agreed that maybe it was indeed time for a new tree.

If you look closely, you see our angel had fallen over and was hanging down crying somebody put me up straight before I lose my halo!

You can see from the reflection that the tree is indeed lit, but it just doesn't show up well.

I love the manger!  A few years ago I glued all the figures down because they kept falling over or out when they were stored.  When I got the manger out of the box this year, I couldn't find baby Jesus!  He had come unglued!  He's back in his place.  When I look at the manger I realize anew how truly amazing that God left his throne of Glory and became flesh and dwelt among us to be the perfect sacrifice for our sin.  

 You can see the stockings are hung.....there are three more to add, a new one currently being monogrammed for Charley and the California grands are bringing theirs when they come on Thursday.

This looks kind of sparse, but we had just hung the mirror and pictures back in the foyer.  I may add to this later or maybe not!  I made the Jesus, Joseph and Mary way back in the 80's when I was in my ceramic phase.  

And then we have the nutcrackers.....bless their hearts they have seen better days.  

And through it all, these boys have been very cold!  I even bought them new sweaters and put a blanket on their bed.  At night they snuggle down under the covers in our bed.  

We're on our way to Christmas, I wasn't sure we were going to make it this year!!