Whew! Finished...For Now...

The ladies of the Investment Club have come and gone.  The meal was successful and my holiday decorating was a big hit!  The ornament wreath, fully-loaded Christmas tree, mantle decoration and simple but elegant trick of branches in a tall glass holder elicited satisfying oooohhhs and aaaahhhs! The French Ribbon on the tree elicited many questions about how I did it, as did the ornament wreath.

This morning at the crack of dawn I was outside clipping more branches, this time for an arrangement for the dinette table - the only dining area in my home.

I love it!  These branches have more barberries and are the perfect tie-in to the ruby-colored that Mr. Don brought from Montreal for me some years ago (you'll see them in the second photo):

And a final photo of the finished product on the living room mantle:

The ornaments are not that large!  It must be the upward titled angle that I took the photo at that makes them look so big!  What an interesting illusion...

So, the dishes are done, no leftovers!  Angie made mimosas (yum!) and we had a lovely toast.  After breakfast we had our gift exchange, Sue distributed the presents from under the tree.  She's decorating her tree tonight and she said she's going to steal lots of my ideas, including decorating from the inside of the tree outward, which is a better way, I think, to fill in the inevitable holes that appear whether you have a real tree or an artificial one. 

The Pack is playing the late (3:15 p.m.) game and so I'm going to work on my latest "project."  Last night I cut out several color print-outs of photographs of cardinals in winter settings that I scooched from the internet.  I have some empty frames I'm going to put them in for the season.  They'll add color and seasonal interest.