I set a lot of fancy tables for photo shoots, but to be entirely honest, I’m much more of a paper plate and lap trays kind of hostess.  I do love pulling out my fine china, linens and silver, but I don’t do it very often (to actually eat on, anyway.)  Our gatherings usually involve football, teenagers and/or small children, so they’re pretty informal.  We’re hosting Christmas this year, so I decided to set a pretty table for my family.  This table is totally different from ones I set up for shoots.  It’s simple, with mismatched chairs and a stained tablecloth that was given to my grandmother as a wedding present.  I’m using my mother’s wedding china and a silver pattern that has been collected by three generations of women in my family.   Gray linen napkins are rolled in mismatched silver napkin rings.       I love the

I’ll admit it.  I was a bit of a loaf yesterday.  I would try to get some work done, but I would end up standing in a room, staring around blankly.  I finally surrendered to the fact that I was tired and just needed to chill.  I watched some TV, worked on e-mails and just let the rest of the Christmas decorating and house cleaning wait.  Today, I was ready to check some more things off the list. Instead of putting up two full-sized trees (like I have the past couple of years…sometimes twice), I decided to do the full-sized tree in the family room and a table-top tree in the living room.  I’d get the exact same feeling, but with less work (and less expense.) The pickings were slim for little trees at the tree farm.  They were all a bit more plump than I wanted, but I just

My tree is normally up the day after Thanksgiving, but this year we kept pushing it back.  We were busy, yes, but a part of me was a little “Christmased out” from a few years of ornament making decorating for Christmas in July and having a tree up in September and another one up in February.  I’m not complaining at all.  I love what I do and all of the decorating insanity that comes along with it.  It just took a bit to get me in the mood this year. We thought we might delay another day, because it was foggy and drizzly yesterday, but I was fed up with my procrastination.  We packed the boys in the car and went to our local tree farm.  I’m not super picky when it comes to Christmas tree, so it took about 5 minutes to pick one out.  This tree didn’t look