Nana, love your Mardi Gras table. So pretty with all the colors. The gold pm, napkin rings, doilies and sherbets are so nice on this table. Lovely cp you found! Your new salad plates are gorgeous. Those napkins are the prettiest color purple. I'm tickled your posting pictures. It's not as big of a challange once you 'Just Do It'. As OA said, Do it one more time and you'll be a pro. I still have some Valentines things to put away today at home too. We put all the Valentine decor away last night at the office. We started installing new computers and had to change out some phone displays last night. By the time I got home all I wanted to do is sleep. Must of went up the ladder to many times. One of our computers needs to be exchanged. I might have to check out DT and find some masks so I can set a table if I head to the city this weekend. It was great to see yours and Kathleens MG ts. Punk

Oh, thanks for posting that, Jim! And thanks everyone, you're all so nice! I admit, I agonized over which houses to choose. They're so beautifully made, so it was some tough decisions. Particular thanks to Jim for the enabling! :-) Flamingo, I had someone else mention to me the tree reminded them of mardi gras-- I see where you're coming from, and while I hadn't thought of that, it DID get me thinking I might add some peacock feathers to it here and there. I have a bunch of them (been using them in decorating for YEARS and now it seems they're in stores everywhere! How does this happen??!) That's part of the fun of coming here; you all help spawn all sorts of great ideas. My house thanks you. :-) -Jenn

Kwanzaa starts tomorrow, and so I will post photos then. My friends at work thought that it was great that I was showing honor to the Kwanzaa tradition by putting up the decoration, and the tradition is not so much a celebration as an acknowledgment of a community that I respect, even though I am not part of it. It is true that red, green, and black are part of the Kwanzaa colors, but they are combined with earth colors rather than silver and white. I have a lot of African artifacts, and so the Kwanzaa decorations fit in fairly nicely, but I have mixed most of my African art with native American art, which seems to complement it fairly well. People with African descent enjoy seeing the art that I've collected, and I think it makes them feel welcome and happy. OTOH, Christmas decorations make me feel sad, for a variety of reasons, and I get a more joyous feeling from the Kwanzaa decorations. I was hoping to see what others have used to decoration for Kwanzaa and get inspirations from that, and I still hope to see that! I redecorated my mother's living room many years ago with dark red trim/woodwork and doors to go with some upholstery fabric that she had bought for me to reupholster the sectional sofa that she had in that room. I used the same fabric to make valances for the windows, and I chose a red from a small rose/flower in the fabric, which also had some green in it. This made that room very appropriate for Christmas decorations, which was good because that was when that room got the most use and was about the only time (other than the occasional Thanksgiving) when the whole family got together.

We always take our decorations down Christmas Eve or Christmas day, some years the outdoor stuff has to stay up because of bad weather. We do put them up the weekend before Thanksgiving. We started taking them down so early when our kids were little and had knocked the tree over 3 times so when they did it on Christmas day I wasn't putting it back up and we found that getting up the day after Christmas with a clean house was nice.