DECORATING AT WORK, BAKING AND COLLECTIONS!!

Well, this is most likely my last post before Christmas so.....

I want to wish all of you a MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

And may you spend it with those you love!!


I have a new Ops Manager at work and she wanted to decorate our department so that we could make a decent showing in the annual Christmas Decorating Contest that the Health Care System I work for holds.

Now other years, since they moved my department to a different location other than the main large hospital, we have had very few decorations.
Someone mentioned my name and long story short, I was sort of put in charge of Christmas decorations. Imagine that????

So here is a tour of where I spend most of my time....

Welcome to the Rehab Department in which I work.......

This is what you see when you get off the elevator in Rehab. This hallway leads down to our Break Room on the right and the Day Room for patients at the end of the hallway on the left.

I thought 2 wreaths on each side of the walls would be a nice Welcome.


I made the wreaths....

This is our Nurse's Station.....

I had this spare potted tree in our Storage Shed ( you know me with trees).

I decorated it with some Shatterproof Balls....

We don't really have the space for a large tree in the station....

This is a live poinsettia. When I was tying the bow around the pot, I thought it was silk because of the glitter on the leaves and then I saw the dirt in the pot!!!

I had this candle holder ( also down my storage shed ) so I decorated it a bit and since we can not have candles, I just put some glittered balls where the candles would go....

You can see 2 of my co workers in the background....

One of my co workers from night shift brought in the garland and gold bows....

I also had a spare Alpine trees so I put this in an out of the way spot in our busy Nurse's station and added some red and gold ornaments bought by our Nurse Practitioner.

I placed it on top of a box which I wrapped with a blanket and used a little tree skirt that I brought in from home.

Our Unit Secretary covered most of the art work on the walls with red and gold foil wrapping paper making them look like presents!


Down the hallway , is the Day Room. It is a large room with tables and the patients some times eat lunch in there. In the evening when they are done with Physical Therapy, some of them spend time in there with their families. There is a 60 inch big screen TV and sometimes, a volunteer with come in and play Bingo and other games with the patients.

So that is where we decided to place the big tree.
'Here are the windows , looking into the Day Room from the hallway. I sprayed Snow on them....

I love how you see the lights of the tree looking in the windows....

And here is the tree.....

I decorated it with just plain ball ornaments and we had a bunch of snow flake ornaments from the Dollar Store from previous years.

We had wrapped boxes as presents last year and I brought in a lighted house that I was not using for under the tree....

I know this is blurry but I thought it still looked pretty.....


Simple but I think it looks pretty. The Day Room will surely be used on Christmas Day by whatever patients that we are not able to send home and have to stay in the hospital. They can enjoy it with their families.....

Well, that was my Tour of where I spend probably most of my life!!!! And this is where I will be Christmas Day Night.....

I did find time to bake cookies....

Chocolate chip cookies , fresh out of the oven....

And Potato Chip Cookies....

I also made fudge, Ricotta Cheese cookies with Butterscotch drops and Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip cookies.

I will be sending some home with the boys on Christmas Day.....

In a previous post, I showed you books that I had saved. These were the Christmas books that I used to read to both of my sons.

Some I bought new and some are vintage Golden Books from Estate Sales....

Frosty, Santa's Toy Shop and Santa's Surprise Book are ones that I remember from my childhood.....

And these were newer ones....


And I loved this book that I bought at a Catholic Guild Store..


I have collected Praying Santa's since then....

And Joey, my oldest son, always loved " A Christmas Carol" because there was a ghost in the story!!

LOL!!

And I want to share with you my Christmas Mug collection!!!

These are the first things I unpack when getting out the Christmas decorations!!

I have had these 3 for many years.....

I love the handles....

I collected these Coke Santa Mugs from Long John Silver's also many years ago....

Each one has the description of the picture on the front....

And I love my vintage cup that I bought at a yard sale.....

It is a Lefton....

and these are 2 new mugs that I bought for 25 cents each at a church Flea Market....

I just LOVE the pictures on these 2....

Love the horse and buggy inside this mug....

And the bottom of it.....


Well, that pretty much is the end of all the pics I took with my now broken camera.

It will take weeks to have it repaired so I am thinking of buying another one and having 2 , using one as a spare.

Any suggestions on what type of camera I should now get??? Something in the $150 $175 price range????

I am off Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights so I will be home Christmas Eve. We will be having our traditional Polish Holy Supper with pierogies, scallops, whole potatoes with butter, shrimp and chicken fingers for Joey since he does not like fish.
Joe and I will be going to Christmas Day Mass and I will be serving Christmas Day Dinner with turkey, stuffing, ham and kielbasi.
Jim, Danielle and Joey will be here both days .

That will be my Christmas present....spending it with the people I love the most.

I am working Christmas Day Night but that is okay. Hospitals don't shut down for the Holidays and someone has to do it.
I do look forward to the time when some day I can stay home for an entire Holiday and not have to go to work. In the last 34 years, I only ever had 2 entire Christmas holidays off and that was with the birth of each one of my sons.

I hope I live long enough to actually get a Christmas Eve and a Christmas Day off!!

SOOOOOOO.......

I will close by wishing all of you a very MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

I am linking up to these parties:

Open House Party Thursday

Vintage Thingie Thursday

Show and Tell Friday

Home Sweet Home Friday

Potpourri Friday

Vintage Inspiration Friday

Pink Saturday

Seasonal Sunday

http://www.aholidayhaven.com/

Metamorphosis Monday

Masterpiece Monday

Table top Tuesday

Rednesday

Wow Us Wednesday

Please stop by and visit these wonderful hosts and those who joined these great parties.

Thanks so much for visiting me!!

Hugs,
Debbie

THANKS and TWEEKS!

Hello!!


First off, I have several thanks that I need to say.

I want to shout out a huge THANK YOU to everyone who visited my Christmas Blog so far this season!! Whether you left a comment or not, I truly appreciate your visits.
I know everyone does not have the time to comment during this busy time of year but I check my stats and I am amazed by how many visits were paid to my blog!!

Thank You!

I also want to thank everyone who featured or mentioned my Christmas Blog on their blogs :

Potpourri Party over at 2805

Sheila over at Note Songs

Gingerbread Party over at Cozy Home Scenes

Read 'Em All Tuesday over at Toostie Time and Esther from Shabby Cottage Collectibles for featuring my Christmas blog on Toostie's Blog!!

And to Scot at The Adventures of Tartanscot for featuring one of my trees in his Christmas Decorating Contest!!
Please click HERE if you would like to see my 17 Christmas Trees!

I also entered a Christmas Tree Contest over @ A Whimsical Christmas.

And Kirsten over at Mushki Loves for featuring my Christmas Blog!


I am so flattered!! I must be blushing!

If I left anyone out, please forgive me and email me so I can include you!!

I also want to thank Natasha over at Keeping the Christmas Spirit Alive, 365 for including my story of Polish Holy Supper on Christmas Eve and the tradition of Pierogies in her post on Christmas Food Traditions. Thanks so much ,my sweet friend!!


I also was contacted by Dave and Mary Morris who have a web site featuring Front Porches. They asked if they could use a picture of my Front Door decorated for Christmas on their web site. Click HERE for a link to their beautiful site, Front Porch Ideas and more. I will keep you posted as to when they will add my pic to their site! Thanks so much, Mary and Dave!

Please click HERE to see the page that i have been featured on.


And this is long over due but I also want to thank Cindy Adkins for including my story in her E Book "Angels at my Door". Click HERE to read about it!
Cindy, dear friend, I am so very honored!

I also want to thank those that posted pictures of my home on Pinterest!
Again, I am so flattered!!

And also THANK YOU to those who emailed me about my Home Tour!! Thanks so much!!

THANK YOU ALL!!!

Much love and many hugs going out to all of you!!

Okay, now I am starting to blubber like a fool......

Today, I want to show you some changes to my Christmas decor. After I finally finished decorating, I then had time to go around and do some tweeking!

I am so glad that I have taken a bunch of pictures and downloaded them to my computer before because my camera is on the blink!! I cannot delete pics and I cannot download pics!!
I am so aggravated about it as it is only 6 months old!
Actually I am sick about it!
So I will see where I will be going from here with this camera problem!

The first change is to the outside decorations was a dusting of snow on December 7th which happened to be my youngest son's , Jim, Birthday. It always has snowed on his birthday!!

I took this picture before I went to bed , hanging out the front door in my night gown!!
LOL!


Now here is what it looked like the next morning.....

Just a dusting but what a difference a bit of snow makes......



Love how snow looks on the garland....

And the flower bed looks so much better with a bit of snow....


Now we will go back inside....

I was inspired by so many things I have seen on Blogs and this idea was one of those inspirations....

I took gold netting like fabric that I had and arranged it on the top of the entertainment center where one of my nativity sets is.....

I also received a beautiful Christmas card that reminded me of this nativity set so I taped it to the base of the angel. Can you see it behind Baby Jesus???

Doesn't Mary on the card look like the figurine?????


I added the cute vintage reindeer to this vignette and filled it with 2 of my Childhood Knee Hugger Elfs.......

Added Shatter proof Balls to these shelves.....

Added , what I call a small accessory tree to the side of the platform in the Living Room for more lighting.....

And another one to the vignette on this chair.....
This made 17 Christmas trees decorated or lit in our home this year.....

Then Joe bought these LED branches for me. They are the Warm White LED lights and do NOT have that bluish light to them......

They add just a touch of light to the hutch...

And more Shatter Proof Balls inside the hutch....


Finished the garland going up the steps......

I have a set of Candle Lights on this garland to match those on the Living Room Tree....

When I showed you the Dining Room, I didn't have the chandy decorated yet.

I added some ornaments.....







The pink snowlfakes are from the Dollar Store several years ago and they only had 2 left then....

And sadly never carried them again!!

Can you see the crystals glistening.....

I was standing in the Kitchen one day and looked into the Living Room and just loved how the light was caught up in the crystals!

And I found 2 cute cupcakes ornaments from A.C.Moore's....

Aren't they so cute? Loved the pink and green colors. They also had them in red and green...

And I moved this angel into the Dining Room when I had no room for it out in the Den....

I just couldn't leave a tree bare so I added a pink bow to the top of this alpine tree and found some angel ornaments up in the attic....



And hung this under the kitchen cabinets....

It is actually the lid of a Christmas tin....

And I placed all of my son's childhood Christmas books in the bottom of the tin and placed it under the end table that the tree in the Den is on top of.....

These newer and vintage Golden books will be featured in another post...

Then I added a few Snow flake and snow men ornaments to this alpine tree...

And added some silver balls and ice blue icicle ornaments to the Powder Room tree...






And blue balls and a painted Snow man ornament to the swag in the Powder Room...

After seeing the pictures that I took of this tree, I adjusted the purple balls since they looked to all be in the front of the tree before and added a bow made out of purple glittered ribbon to the top....

You may or may not remember this tree skirt that I bought at a Thrift Shop for half price paying only $2.50????

Here it is in the Guest Room after I changed out the tree skirt that I had with this tree originally....

The pink ruffle matches a lot of things in this room....

And I changed up the top of my fake mantle a bit by added some vintage looking angel figurines and vintage reindeer....





So those are some of the changes and additions that I made as I went around the house tweeking decorations!!



If you missed my Home Tour, there are links to each room in my Side Bar!!

I was busy last week because of company coming and an Open House that I hold every year for people from our church that have helped us with the fund raisers that we were in charge of and assisted with.

I did forget to take pictures!! What else is new??? LOL!

I am linking up to these great parties:

Metamorphosis Monday
Amaze Me Monday

Mod Vintage Mix Monday

Masterpiece Monday

Tabletop Tuesday

Wow Us Wednesday

Rednesday

Open House Party Thursday

Potpourri Friday

Show and Tell Friday

Vintage Inspiration Friday

Home Sweet Home Friday

Pink Saturday

Seasonal Sunday

http://www.aholidayhaven.com/

Please stop by and pay these hosts and their guests a visit!!

Thanks so much for stopping by today and every day that you take the time to visit me!!

Hugs,
Debbie