Your Garland is Showing: Holiday Garland Show and Tell Sponsored by The Nester

Today is a really fun day hosted by the Nester! We're showing garlands!



But this post would be better titled: True Confessions.

In case you think that beautiful garland is mine, uh...well...

I guess the best thing to do is to "tell" right from the beginning.

The garland belongs to Kim, one of a group of three Kims (Mrs. Mermaid Kim, Daisy Cottage Kim, and Christmas Kim) who are each sweet friends of mine from Florida. Christmas Kim is originally from Texas, and her Florida home was the venue for a very special Christmas party. Being the historian of the group entertained there, I came armed for the occasion with my trusty camera.

Guess I'd also better confess that my garland is still not up. Hmmmm... it's the tenth of December already, you say. Yep. It's tucked away in its nice plastic home that resembles a trash bag (actually multiple trash bags) in my attic. Oh, it will go up, but just not in time for the Nester's shindig. I didn't want to be Scrooge, so I called Kim and got permission to show shots of her home on my blog. That's my version of a quick fix. ;-)

The first shot is her great room, and I was wondering how on earth she got that garland up and over the fireplace like that. Nester could probably tell us, but I'm clueless. The room has huge ceilings as you can tell from this next picture. I accidentally cut off the red bow at the top of the garland...



Then I have a shot of the garland in Kim's foyer area which features her sweeping staircase and Mr. Santa standing guard...



I took this next shot of a friend of who hates to have her picture made, so I obligingly cut her out of the picture to show you the greenery, ribbon, and other fou-fou on the newel post. That's why the picture is such an odd shape. ;-)



Here's a shot of some of the other things in Kim's Christmas collection. First there's another Mr. Santa and his sleigh on another table in the foyer (as you can tell, Kim collects Santas, and another room which I forgot to photograph is a veritable Santa Kingdom)...



Then there's an angel standing guard over the dining room table [while playing with fire] and making sure you're not eating too many sweets...



Oops, she caught these three characters! Not naming names. They happen to be three of my favorite birds, so I'm letting them off the hook... this time! ;-)



And there's this Santa on another foyer table leading into what is normally Kim's formal living room.



The formal living room was cleared to make room for this 14 foot high, live Christmas tree. I think she said there were something like seven or eight thousand lights on it. The tree stands in a bay window with two-story ceilings, and everyone passing by on the street nearby can see this lovely, glistening tree...



And last but not least, there's twinkly Kim herself, seeing us to the door and bidding us all a very Merry Christmas!



Hope you enjoyed the tour. I thought these pictures were too pretty not to share, and the event was for a very good cause. Each year, our group adopts some of the foster children in the welfare system and are Santa to those kids. Many times, children come into foster care with the clothes on their backs or with all of their possessions in a brown paper bag. The state of Florida doesn't have the funds to provide Christmas for these children, so local groups and individuals fill in the gap. Our group's participants are given wish lists to shop for their Christmas children. The group's gifts are collected by Kim and her co-chair Elizabeth. Then the foster moms meet the chairmen at a secret meeting place for the hand-off! ;-) Elizabeth, who is Kim's partner in crime, is camera shy and would die of mortification if she thought I put her picture on the Internet so I honored her wishes... though she happens to be thin, brunette, and gorgeous! :-)

Thank you so much for stopping by my blog. I enjoy having you visit. And I look forward to seeing the other participants' garlands and hearing their stories as well. If you'd like to join me, hop on over to:

http://nestingplacenc.blogspot.com/
Merry Christmas!


Quintessentially,


Mrs. Magpie (Sheila)

P.S. Nester, I really did try, but I couldn't get everything done (had to get the tree up and put things away because I made a horrible mess!) Here is my garland. At least most of it made it downstairs...


Next year, okay??? ;-)