I made a few more Christmas Mice for the plates at the Christmas dinner, and I made chocolate covered cherries for DH.

When the grands arrived, we took some time to get reacquainted. That didn’t take long.

We had our usual Christmas Eve tradition of opening Christmas jams and one other present.

Then it was bath time. Grandma’s big sink comes in handy.

After the twins snuggled down for bed, the rest of us watched “A Muppet Christmas Carol.” Another Christmas Eve tradition.

Then it was time for bed, dreams and waiting…one more sleep till Christmas. ~~Rhonda

The Christmas tree in the guest room has a silver and blue theme, with a lean toward a vintage feel. The tree has white LED lights that have a bluish cast. The tree rotates. So much prettier in person, but you get the idea. By the way, this is the tree I spray painted last year. Worked great!!

You can see more Christmas decorating ideas at The Inspired Room. Scroll down that page for links to other sites where homes are being readied for the holidays.

~~Rhonda ::busy decorating the living room tree today::

When I get all the ribbons and little holly leaves on the stack to the left, the invitations will be finished.

I used Print Shop to design the invitation. I imported the vintage postcard print, then added the invitation and the light green background. It’s printed on a cream colored “parchment” card stock. Each sheet of card stock printed four invitations. When I trimmed them, I left a cream colored border around the green to add a light border.

I used gold Stickles to outline the border of the postcard print, then used red Stickles to outline the green background and to color the ribbons and the holly berries. Green Stickles highlight the holly leaves. Once they dried, they were matted with red card stock and I used a Krylon 18kt gold leafing pen to put the last border on the invitation.

The holly leaves were punched from green card stock printed with “Please Come!” and outlined with the gold leafing pen.

These will go in the Christmas cards and will be mailed the day before Thanksgiving. Once I get the invitations done, all I have to do for the Christmas cards is put together the Christmas letter. I’ll probably finalize that in October. But the cards/invites will be ready and waiting!

~~Rhonda