Christmas Decorating 3. Thank you Patti and Jon!

Look what arrived at our house today:
I love these sorts of things. Patti has a wonderful hand at this. I like it so much that it's going to stay on the dining room table until, oh, spring, at least.

And Owen, of course, loved the circles.

Christmas Decorating. 2. Tree and Lamppost

And here is what I did with the lamppost in our front yard. Not much, but I think it helps.

The Christening of the Fireplace

After having the fireplace and chimney inspected a few weeks ago, we had our first burn last weekend. My dad, visiting with my mom in honor of Owen's birthday, was there to help us through the process.
It worked well, and Dad managed to mostly burn through two big pieces of petrified wood that were left by the previous owners. However, using the fireplace makes the whole house smoky-smelling, for, like, days. And since I associate the smell of smoke with morning sickness and smog chamber experiments at a previous university, we have a problem (well, I have a problem). I hope that there is some leak-fixit that can be done to the chimney. Another item on our long list of projects.

But it was quite cozy, as you can see from my view, sitting in the rocking chair next the fireplace.

Christmas Decorating. 1. The Fire Place Mantel

I snipped evergreen limbs from the yard, threw them on the mantel, added candles and some fake plastic fruit. I can't tell if it looks like cozy ensemble or a mess, but it's festive.

I also had placed our stockings on the mantel, via heavy iron stocking holders. There were there long enough for O to show me that he is just tall enough to grab the stocking, but not long enough for the logical conclusion to stocking grabbing to occur (that is, pulling down the stocking, carrying the cast iron holder with it, and crashing onto his head).

I'm perplexed with how to accessorize this part of our living room. The fireplace looks unbalanced to me. Starting at the top, the ceiling comes to a point on the right side of the center line of the fireplace. And then the left side of the fireplace is bricked, but the right side is sheetrock. And then there's the hearth; it extends on the right, but not on the left. Plus, I have a scale problem with many of the accessories I have, as in, they were purchased for decorating small apartments of our grad school years.

So, when I try to accessorize this area in a traditional way, it just looks weird and even more unbalanced. I need to embrace the asymmetry, but I'm out of ideas.

Two-year old in the house

(Those are supposed to be circles, which is his very favorite thing in the whole world. They became blobs, unfortunately; poor icing technique on my part.)
But really, it would have been simpler to give him a can of chocolate frosting.