A Christmas Idea and Free Vintage Valentine Image

Hi Everyone,

How's your new year going? Great I hope! It's been pretty busy around here, seems like I'm always saying that lol... but it's true. Now that we have a little extra "free" time, with visitation being drastically reduced and the hustle and bustle of Christmas activities completed, we've been able to focus on some things that have been ignored.

Are you totally tired of Christmas? I hope not, because I have a couple of last minute Christmas photos to share with you. One of my favorite Christmas traditions is creating a new ornament for the tree. Every year the grandkids and I try and get creative and make a new ornament for the tree. This year we chose to create designer snowmen. Jordan, Kaiden and I had a great time making them.

Kaiden was really into the zebra print!

Jordan insisted that her snowman had arms and a lot of bling. lol

Grandma was really into pink! lol We had a lot of fun and of course created a lot of memories to go with our snowman.

This was our second Christmas staying at mom's. Last year, we only put up a couple of stockings because I couldn't find a way to hang all of them. I tried using the removable hanger thingies but either I wasn't attaching the holders correctly or the adhesive didn't like the surface of the fireplace, but either way they didn't work for me. This year as we were shopping, we happened to wander through the bath area of a department store and my eyes landed on the shower tension rods. All of a sudden it dawned on me that I could use a tension rod to hold the stockings and the S-hooks typically used to hold the shower curtain would be perfect for holding the stockings. So I purchased what I needed and happily went on my way.

This worked perfectly! I was able to put the tension rod between the mantel base boards and the S-hooks held the stockings! I was a little afraid the weight of the filled stockings would pull the tension rod down, but it held like a champ and believe me we have lots of stockings with lots of weight by the time they're all filled.

I covered it with garland and decorated the mantel. By the time I was all done, you couldn't even tell that the shower rod was there.

I got to thinking about this and it dawned on me that the idea could be used by all the folks that don't have fireplaces as well. You could use it in window frames or in doorways, or in kitchen/den areas where there's a cut out between the two of them. If you need something not quite so heavy duty as a shower rod, you could use those little gold extension rods that are made for curtains. I bet they would work just great for a couple of stockings. Anyway, I think this was my best Christmas idea for the year! lol

Are you working on your valentines? I've been browsing through my cards trying to decide which image I'll use this year. At the moment I'm kind of partial to this darling little puppy. The original sentiment refers to him as being a gingham puppy, but in my opinion, I think he's more of a plaid vs a gingham. What do you think? Make sure you click on him before you save him.

Have a great week, plumb full of smiles!

Peggy

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