Happy Holidays!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. We spent the holidays in crisp, cold but sunny Calgary with my sister's family. We had a great time and enjoyed fabulous food, especially Donna's home baking! This is a card my niece Erica made for me. She knows i love blue and birds. We had some fun doing some art projects. I'll have to get them to send me some pictures. We did cards and some paper quilt style collage.

I am late posting some pics of my Christmas decorations. I have over 20 rubbermaid totes filled with ornaments, all but one are in storage back in Novato. We moved down to Pasadena with just one box - my latest theme - birds and robin's egg blue.

We just bought a small tree, about 4 1/2 feet, at Fresh and Easy for $14.99. It sits on top of a small table covered with a plush pale blue tree skirt. I only used aqua blue tinsel, birds and glass icicles.
Here is my mantel - usually it just has my collection of white things, but i added some black and white or silvery christmas cards saved from past years. Then i added some mercury glass balls in robin's egg blue and some organza ribbon with blue and silver spots.
Here is the whole effect. Those are twinkly christmas lights on the log in the fire box.

Here is a fabulous winter banner from my dear friend and kindred spirit Aileen from Outside the Margins. She wrote about this banner on her blog - and so i was very excited to see that she sent it to me! Here is her tutorial.

Today is new year's eve. Later this evening, the flower covered floats for the Pasadena Rose Bowl parade will start lining up along Orange Grove blvd, right outside our door. I'll have some fun pics to post tomorrow. Hope you have a fun and festive day and ring in the new year with some tasty bubbly!