Cards on the mantel

I got a lot of lovely Christmas cards this year and I decided to display them on the fireplace mantel. With the "fire" going on my flatscreen it makes for a very cozy atmosphere. Happy Holidays to everyone :)

Birthday gifts for me,The Beautiful Wreck

I had a birthday last week.
My friend Jan has a knack of giving the best gifts. She's an inveterate haunter of antique shops, tag sales, and thrift shops of all kinds so she's always finding the most thoughtful presents. I've been the recipient of her finds many times over the years. This year included.
She gave me a little cast iron set of boots.



She thought they were cowboy boots (a nod to my Texas heritage) but I think they look more like the kind of boots European armies wore in the 19th Century, think the Swedish dragoon in "A Little Night Music".



I think they were the base to a military doll. Whatever they are I like them and they make a nice paper weight for my desk.
Jan's husband, Hugh, is a product designer and amateur cartoonist. He makes the best homemade greeting cards. This year my birthday card was no exception. It's me in bed dreaming of pies, cakes, muffins, and more pies. Very true to life!
I had an extra picture frame so I thought it would make a nice piece of kitchen art.

Have a holly jolly lobby Christmas

My building goes all out with the Christmas decorations this time of year. And they do quite a good job of it.
In the rotunda when you first enter the building's lobby, they've wrapped the columns on either side of the entry to the long hallway leading to the elevator. Plus there's two big cachepots of poinsettias.



Moving down that hallway there's a large mirrored wall on the righthand side with a demi-lune table, it's bedecked with holiday trimmings.



Then you come to the very large Christmas tree...





...and at the far end of the hallway is the fireplace with a huge wreath above it.



Then there's one more wreath on the wall opposite the elevator bank.



Pretty festive, no?

The candle save

A couple of years ago I bought a really nice candle holder at Crate & Barrell. A thick wooden base with a  tall glass cylindrical hurricane that went on top. It would hold big pillar candles. When I moved into the new apartment I kept it on the coffee table. One time I had burned a candle and as it melted it flooded the base completely with wax on the inside of the glass. The next day when I went to clean out the wax the glass broke. Ugh. So into the closet the wooden base went for a year.
Then I had a brainstorm this morning. I had a cylindrical glass vase in one of the kitchen cabinets I never used. It fit perfectly on the wooden base of the candle holder. I had a pillar candle but it was too tall for the vase so I cut about an inch and a half off the bottom. It was a mess to do but it fit perfectly inside the vase. The next brainstorm was that I deduced I could save a lot of money by not burning big pillar candles anymore if I just placed a tea light in the top. It looks like the pillar is burning up on the mantle. So the whole thing was a 'work around save' all around.

The wooden base and new hurricane...

with a tea light on the inside...

and a perfect look on the mantle :)

We need a little Christmas

Well, it's been a pretty suck-o year. But now that it's December it's time to, as Rosalind Russell says in "The Trouble With Angels", to "celebrate the season of our Savior's birthday". So I pulled out my (few) Christmas decorations and put them up. I have a LOT more at the house in Long Island, that's where I go nuts with the seasonal decor, but a few little things do make the place here in the city more festive. And, boy, as Angela Lansbury sings in "Mame", "we need a little Christmas now". (You can hear it here.)
First off, there's no room that doesn't look a whole lot more festive with white twinkly lights. I put a strand on the big picture window sill and it brightens up the whole place.





Then I have my snow white stocking on the marble mantle.





And last, a homemade snow globe a friend made for me as a gift a few Christmas ago. It's on the mantle too.