It's an official contest and more decorating

Ok, it's official, "Name the Snowman" is a real contest. I'll tell you that the winner will be getting a hand-made ornament of my choosing and if I were you I wouldn't be surprised if it had something to do with the contest. So, you have until Christmas Eve morning at 9 AM to post a comment with your suggestion or suggestions. I will then put all the names in a hat and have my mother choose the winning name. That seems fair. This means that multiple suggestions gives you multiple chances to win. I'll post the winner's name Christmas Eve and will send you an email as well.

Ok, that's out of the way, now for pictures of decorations. Yesterday mom and I must have thought we had all the time in the world because we decided to head outside and cut some branches from one of the magnolia trees and use them on a table in the Family room. The idea was simple, but we got a little carried away with our cutting and ended up with lots of branches and leaves, much more then we needed for this.It doesn't really show up that well, but some of the leaves I painted silver, so in person it looks much better. (To the left is the snowman who shall be named later.) To the right of this table is the fireplace.
I liked this picture, even though it's kind of dark, because you can sort of see the lights.

You may be wondering what we did with the left over magnolia branches, since as you can see I didn't use all that many. Well wonder no more...There it hangs in all it's glory. I added in some boxwood, since mine needed to be trimmed a bit anyway, and of course painted some silver. Decided it would look wonderful hanging outside the Sun Porch. You can see my father inside enjoying a good book while I did work. Must be nice to be retired.

I actually managed to send out almost all of my Christmas cards this evening. I have a couple that didn't go out. I ran out of cards with just a couple to go. That's just my luck. Went shopping for most of the food I'll need for Christmas Eve. We still haven't decided on what to have Christmas Day. I'm leaning toward either a pork loin or standing rib roast. I'm going to take a stroll through some recipes and then decide what might be the easiest.

Tonight more cookie baking ensued. I need to get up early and start back at it in the morning, plus do any prep work for Christmas Eve. I almost forgot that mom and I have tickets to see "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" in Jacksonville Sunday night. I can't imagine having a show that close to Christmas, but it's part of our series, so we're going. That means Sunday I won't get any cooking done. But I'm sure I'll enjoy the play!